Bert Haanstra

Albert Haanstra (; 31 May 1916 – 23 October 1997) was a Dutch director of films and documentaries. His documentary Glass (1958) won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1959. His feature film Fanfare (1958) was the most visited Dutch film at the time, and has since only been surpassed by Turkish Delight (1973). Early life Albert Haanstra was born on 31 May 1916 in Espelo, a small village near Holten, in the Netherlands. His father was Folkert Haanstra, a schoolteacher, and his mother Jansje Schuiveling. Haanstra grew up in the village of Goor. Because he lived during the poverty of the 1920s, Haanstra grew up with the mindset that in order to get the most out of life, he would need to work hard and live below his means in order to survive. Haanstra's father retired early as a schoolteacher and started his lifelong dream of becoming a painter. Haanstra himself, after realizing teaching didn't interest him, became a painter himself and started experimenting with photography. Through his fascination, Haanstra became friends with a local cinema owner who eventually would let him see movies for free from the projection room, where Haanstra's desire to dabble in cinema would grow. By collecting scrap equipment that had been thrown away, Haanstra made a homemade projector, and after doing odd jobs around his village to earn money, he bought films from a local drugstore to play them on his projector. He was later accepted into Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences but would subsequently turn it down as he felt that the long years of study would be nothing in comparison to real life experience. During his later employment as a press photographer, Haanstra experimented in staged photography, where he would create his first film, Catfish. Career