Jan Kaunen was born on May 2, 1964 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He received an art education, in 1988 he graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in Nice, where he studied the art of cinema and animation. His thesis was awarded a national diploma - for plastic expressiveness. Then Jan Kaunen worked as an animator on Danish television, then turned to documentary films, later he became an assistant operator in a press agency, filming documentaries and clips. In 1989, at the festival of fantastic
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Jan Kaunen was born on May 2, 1964 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He received an art education, in 1988 he graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in Nice, where he studied the art of cinema and animation. His thesis was awarded a national diploma - for plastic expressiveness. Then Jan Kaunen worked as an animator on Danish television, then turned to documentary films, later he became an assistant operator in a press agency, filming documentaries and clips. In 1989, at the festival of fantastic cinema in Avoriaz, Jan Kaunen received the Grand Prix for a short film for his debut feature film "Gisele Kerosene". Since 1990, the director began to actively work on the field of creating video clips and commercials. On account of his work for the group "Erasure", for the companies "Adidas", "Peugeot", "Smirnoff", "Toyota", "Mico", "Nats" and others. In 1994, acting simultaneously as a co-writer and producer, Jan Kaunen directed the short film Vibroboy, which attracted attention with an unusual video sequence and provocativeness. He then directed the musical short The Last Red Riding Hood (1996), featuring Emmanuel Bear. In 1997, Jan Kaunen shot his first full-length film - the criminal action "Doberman", which received worldwide fame. In 2004, the director released his new film, the mystical western Blueberry, starring Vincent Cassel. During the preparatory period, the director became interested in shamanism - so he even made several trips to the Amazon, where he spent a lot of time with the shaman of the Shipibo-Kunibo Indian tribe. On the basis of filmed materials about shamanistic practices in 2003, Kaunen edited a full-length documentary film “Other Worlds”.