27 Apr 13:00 - 16:00

Gerben Schermer (Netherlands, 1959) started the Holland Animation Film Festival together with animation filmmaker Gerrit van Dijk in 1985. Schermer’s passion for the continuation of animation as an independent art form has led to a distinguished career in festival selection and programming. Schermer has held positions as a member of the board for the international organisations ASIFA and CARTOON, and the Dutch organisations Holland Animation Association and House of Shorts. He was a founding member of the Netherlands Institute for Animated Films and served as a consultant for the Netherlands Film Fund. Nowadays Schermer is active in the advisory committee for the Grant Programme for Design of the Creative Industries Fund and recently also as advisor for the VandenEnde Foundation.Gerben Schermer composed guest programmes for numerous festivals around the world, for instance a profound overview of animated documentaries for the well-known International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2007 and Fantoche (Switzerland) in 2011 and served as a jury member for renowned film festivals. Occasionally Schermer is involved in film production, for instance the animation shorts Run of the Mill by Børge Ring (1999) and Test One Two by Paul & Menno de Nooijer (2004). In 2010 he produced the animation film Clown’s Revolution by the active young Chinese visual artist Sun Xun who has worked in 2010 for a few months in Utrecht as artist-in-residence of the HAFF.