Ruud Monster

Biography

Ruud Monster followed Frans Zwartjes’ film workshops at the Vrije Academie in The Hague from 1970 to 1976. His first film, Dormitory Town, a portrait of daily life filmed in an apartment in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer, still bears clear traces of Zwartjes’ approach. In subsequent years, Monster made several more some experimental films, together Alie Wiering, which focused on daily life.

In 1986, Monster and Jan Ketelaars founded the company Jura Filmprodukties. For this company, they produced their own films, as well as films by others. The films that Ruud Monster made for Jura include the series Observations, which was a second series of short films about the Netherlands, after he had already made the series Along the Road in 1986.

In 2005, Monster set up the company Oogland Producties, together with John Albert Jansen. The company’s aims were to ‘signal and stimulate developments within film, video, and the related arts, and to make films that are particularly involved with the intersection between art and society’.

In 2005, Monster appeared in the film Frans Zwartjes, de grote tovenaar, which was a portrait of his mentor Frans Zwartjes.