Bea de Visser is a Dutch filmmaker and artist whose career spans over four decades of experimental practice. She first emerged in the early 1980s as a sound and performance artist, creating interdisciplinary projects in clubs, art spaces, and festivals. Over time, her work evolved into an internationally recognized blend of film art, digital media, installation, and live performance. She leads the independent production studio Anotherfilm, lectures at the University of the Arts, and mentors young artists in scenography and performance, ensuring that her influence extends well beyond her own creative practice. Her works are held in international collections and have been screened at leading film festivals and museums around the world.
Throughout her career, De Visser has been praised for her ability to combine poetic sensibility with cinematic precision. Whether through installation, short film, or performance, she approaches moving image as a painter might approach canvas: layering rhythm, texture, and atmosphere to craft works that both disturb and illuminate.
Her award-winning short, No horses on Mars, epitomizes this unique approach. Structured as a road film, the piece is told through an unconventional perspective—that of a horse. The viewer enters the galloping mind of a domesticated animal, perceiving landscapes and rhythms not as a human observer but through an embodied, non-human lens.
The film juxtaposes two ways of knowing: on one hand, the human desire to measure, categorize, and domesticate; on the other, the subtle individuality and recognition that emerge when one dares to see beyond anthropocentric frameworks. Through the horse’s gaze, De Visser opens up a poetic space that destabilizes our certainties about perception, identity, and control.
Awarded Best Short Film, No horses on Mars is a meditation on perspective and recognition. It challenges audiences to reconsider what it means to truly see another being, and in doing so, it affirms De Visser’s place as one of the most original voices in contemporary short cinema.
