I am a cultural anthropologist turned filmmaker. Since 2004 I’m working as a freelance director & cameraman. My interest as a filmmaker are mainly social and cultural subjects/issues, predominantly in Africa. I’ve worked in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Senegal. I am very passionate about story-telling. As a director I made it my trademark to work as an one-man team and to spend lengthy periods of time in the field to tell compelling stories in a creative way and with visual flair. My work with the Loita Maasai in Kenya illustrates that. In 2005 I directed and filmed ‘The Eunoto Ceremony’, an ethnographic registration of a rite de passage, which is held only every 14 years and it involved 800 warriors. At the same time I started with the still ongoing documentary project ‘Maasai Brothers - A Greek family tragedy in Africa’. The protagonists are three brothers. Maasai men are divided in age groups and every 7 years they progress to a next stage in life. When the brothers progress to another stage, that will mean the end of this documentary and the beginning of a new one.
In the documentary ‘The voice of Ile à Morphil’ (2008), on a development aid relationship between farmers from the Netherlands & Senegal, highlighted by a nocturnal concert of Baaba Maal, it becomes clear that any development project which ignores culture is doomed to end up as another ‘white elephant’.
As a cameraman I successfully handled productions from A to Z single-handedly but I also have a lot experience as a straight cameraman in a production crew. Besides being able to see things accurately (not looking!), I can listen very carefully. That is, I believe, the most important feature for a cameraman to give the image emotional and relational depth. What I see and hear, I capture, with eye for detail, into a visually strong narrative.
Clients of Weijs Film, my company, are various broadcast and production companies, directors and NGO’s & NPO’s. I am partly based in Nairobi, Kenya.
