Jacques Verbeek

Biography

Jacques Verbeek was a student of Frans Zwartjes at both the Academie voor Industriële Vormgeving in Eindhoven and the Vrije Academie in The Hague. He has been making films since the early 1970s, usually in collaboration with his partner Karin Wiertz, who also studied at the Academie voor Industriële Vormgeving. Verbeek has also acted in films made by, for example, Paul de Mol and Jan Ketelaars.

The films of Verbeek and Wiertz excel as sophisticated games of space, light, and shadow. Using a combination of different animation techniques (drawing and photo animation, stop motion), they create their own architectural worlds with built spaces made from geometric figures such as cubes or triangles, suggesting a third dimension.

The music in their films is almost always made by Bertus Borgers.

Verbeek worked in the audio-visual department of the Stadsacademie voor Toegepaste Kunsten in Maastricht. In 1973, Verbeek and Wiertz received the Billiton Van der Rijn Prize, an award for filmmakers who have contributed to the development of film in the Netherlands.