Menno Otten graduated in Directing at the Netherlands Film Academy in 2009. During his study he developed a personal style of documentary filmmaking resulting in films such as Time within Time, Via Dolorosa and Face to Face. All three films won multiple international awards and shown on festivals around the globe.
Besides documentaries Menno directed many video-installations commissioned and acquired by companies like Samsung, Philips, The Royal Concert Hall and Eye Film Museum among many others.
In 2013 he shot his first series of video-art pieces in which he explores the possibilities of cinema and moving light within (old master) paintings. His work “Girl Reading Letter at an Open Window” had it’s first solo exhibition at the Museum Prinsenhof Delft in 2015 under the title: “Framing Vermeer” and in 2016 it was shown at the Pushkin Museum of Arts in Moscow.
For his video-art work “Moving Mesdag”, Menno Otten teamed up with Samsung, ConspiracySinc and Panorama Mesdag to shine new light on the famous masterpiece “Panorama Mesdag”. The project was completed in 2016 and shown on 14 enormous 88″-inch curved screens within a costum made globe. Moving Mesdag was placed on the famous Museumplein among many other locations and had more then 65.000 visitors.
Menno is currently preparing his new solo exhibition which is mainly focusing on his (portrait) photography work shot over the past years on the streets of Amsterdam. Along side new video-installations this show is scheduled for March 2017.
Menno is a guest-teacher at the Dutch Film Academy and the Open Studio school for Digital Media.
