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My name is Bram Vergeer, I'm 27 years old and at the moment I am working parttime as a tourguide around the globe. I'm being send to different parts of the world to guide groups of Dutch tourist around. I've been working in East Africa and Central America so far. The rest of my time I spend filmmaking and working for the InsideOut Foundation, which I founded with my friend Tim.

In the year 2006 I finished my masters in Creative Development (Dramaturgie) at the Professional School of the Arts Utrecht (www.psau.nl). I wrote my final thesis about the way Dutch NGO's present them on the Internet. During my masters I also worked on the IBISS project, developing a website (www.ibiss.info) for this Dutch NGO which works with street kids in Rio de Janeiro. I finished my bachelor in Media & Culture at the University of Amsterdam in 2004, with a minor in Development Studies.

Apart from the fact that I had a great time studying and I enjoyed the subjects I found out that filmmaking itself got more of my interest. This eventually resulted in the short feature film Destiny, which I made with film colleague Raymond Verhoef. The film is based on a short story by the Coen Brothers and has a duration of 30 minutes. It has shown in different theatres in Holland and on various film festivals. More info at http://destiny.hku.nl. Shortly after the release we sat up a plan to make a series of short films where we follow Dutch rap artists in the neighbourhood where they live. He series is called Waar Ik Woon and can be seen on www.statemagazine.nl.

My second visit to Africa took place in the summer of 2006. My friend and me were asked to make a documentary film about the hiphopscene on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. The film is called Zenji Flava. It premiered at Film by the Sea 2006 and received many positive reviews. The film has been shown also on the Sauti Sa Busara festival in Zanzibar, the Wapi meetings in Nairobi and MTV's Black Soil in Amsterdam and The Hague.

This stimulated me to continue filming and I decided to move to Nairobi. I started the project New Voices and found Oxfam Novib willing to sponsor it. The film talks about the role of gender within hiphop and the way hiphop reaches groups of people who are normally hard to reach. New Voices at the moment is being used in secondary schools as an addition to the Africa Zeeland project.

After this I started working on the film 7 years, a documentary about homosexuality in Kenya. It drew a lot of attention in Holland and eventually I received support from Youth Incentives, Hivos and NCDO. The film has been broadcasted by the station MVS and was programmed at the Internation Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. It has also been screened at over 20 (film)festivals across the world, from Cape Town to Turin and from New York to Bilbao. I was invited to 5 of these festivals to present the film. New requests for 7 years keep on coming in so the film will be seen at festivals probably the next year as well. In North America (Mexico, USA and Canada) the film is being distributed by Frameline, a distributor of LGBT Media. (www.frameline.org)

During my stay in Nairobi I also worked on different short films for Tim's website www.insideafrica.tv. These 15 films can now be seen on www.youtube.com/bramvergeer, together with a short documentary about the Zanzibar International Film Festival 2007, which I made for Hivos.

In september 2007 I founded the InsideOut Foundation together with Tim Metz. The aim of the foundation is to create a broader image of countries that are usually depicted in a very limited way by the common media. We try to initiate filmprojects and support filmmakers across the world. In januari 2008 4 young Dutch filmmakers went to Ghana to make the documentary Black Stars, about the Africa Cup in Ghana. They didn't have any experience in filmmaking so we gave then the basic preperations and borrowed them our camera. We also applied for funds and got sponsorship from the Amsterdam Art Foundation. The film premiered at the Africa in the Picture Filmfestival in Amsterdam and is now being promoted worldwide.

At the moment I'm working on an assignment from Cordaid, one of the biggest Dutch NGO's. I'm producing a DVD with short films ment for primary school students in The Netherlands. It will be distributed together with additional educational material. I went to Malawi in november 2008 and the DVD will be finished in april 2009.

In the near future I will try to expand the activities of the InsideOut Foundation. Together with various organisations we are aplying for funds and we are setting up different filmprojects.Apart from that I will continue to convert my own ideas into projects, the first will be a documentary on homosexuality in Morocco.