Biography
As an experimental director, Penelope Buitenhuis is best known for using Super 8 and 16mm film to capture her subjects, which have ranged from political anarchists to trendy Japanese bar hostesses. Originally from Canada, she studied at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver under experimental filmmakers David Rimmer and Al Razutis. Attracted to revolutionaries and the punk movement, she moved to Berlin in 1984 and created "Alternative Squatting" and "We Just Want to Live Here," which chronicled the lives of young squatters in Europe. She continued making low-budget short films, which were often screened in festivals and alternative cinemas. Buitenhuis' 1989 film "Llaw" (wall spelled backwards) explored political disillusionment during the fall of the Berlin Wall. It won the Jury Prize at the 1990 European Media Art Festival and subsequently gained a lot of attention worldwide. Her short films were also showcased at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in her retrospective "Guns, Girls and Guerrillas." By the 1990s Buitenhuis entered mainstream cinema and directed television series such as "Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction" and the popular Canadian crime saga "Cold Squad." As she became settled as an established television director, Buitenhuis backtracked to her nonconformist identity and released "Tokyo Girls," which won multiple awards and nominations for its striking examination of the seedy underworld of fast-paced Tokyo nightclubs. In the mid-2000s, Buitenhuis' main focus was directing made-for-TV crime thrillers for Canadian networks.
