Okki Poortvliet
Design BA: Animation & Illustration + Time Based Design
Minerva Art Academy- Hanze
Graduates: 2021
Specialisms: Film / Printmaking / Drawing
My location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Okki Poortvliet
First Name: Okki
Last Name: Poortvliet
University / College: Minerva Art Academy- Hanze
Course / Program: Design BA: Animation & Illustration + Time Based Design
Graduates: 2021
Specialisms: Film / Printmaking / Drawing
My Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Website: Click To See Website
About
Okki Poortvliet (1999) is a documentary filmmaker, artist, and designer. She grew up in Odoorn, a small village in the north of the Netherlands, and studied Design at Minerva Art Academy and Philosophy at the University of Groningen. She developed a distinctive film style in which story and imagery go hand in hand. Okki’s films are anthropological, experimental, and and place a strong emphasis on visual composition. In addition to being screened in cinemas, her work is often presented as part of installations and exhibitions.Okki is fascinated by people, their surroundings, and their worldviews. This fascination comes to life in films such as IJswee, about Manus who sharpens ice skates; World's Greatest Missile Builder, featuring Jippe who aims to outdo Kim Jong-un; The Flaghoisters, in which Ricardo nails his regional flag to a windmill; and Over the Cattlegrid, following Robert who cycles through the forest every morning at 5:30.Alongside her film and installation work, Okki creates drawings, posters, and texts. Starting in September 2025, she will spend two years as a research fellow at the Master of Film program at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam.
In Over the Cattle Grid you watch and listen to Robert, Rinke and Ytzen. Three people who spend every day in the woods between the villages of Odoorn and Exloo. Ytzen and Rinke because they live in the middle of the woods, Robert because he cycles through the woods every day to get to work. All three experience the world behind the cattle grid as a different world than the one in front of the cattle grid. Behind the grid there is peace, the forest is sometimes endless and time seems to pass in a different way. Or as Ytzen says "there is no time, there is just being". Yet they experience a lot of change, because the forest is different every day. But Robert, Rinke and Ytzen also see things they have never seen before, such as trees that lose their leaves in September and plants that want to start growing in the middle of winter. You will also see Wietse de Haan and Evert Prummel, they build instruments from dead trees. All the music you hear in the film was played on these tree instruments and recorded in the forest. Okki herself also occasionally passes by. She has been coming to this piece of forest all her life, which is a kilometer from the house where she grew up. Not only has she known the forest, but also Robert, Ytzen and Rinke for most of her life.