Carine Bijlsma(1983) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer who lives and works both in Amsterdam and New York. 

She studied photography in New York, Florence Italy and graduated from the Dutch Film and Television Academy in 2008, winning both the Wildcard Award and the Prince Bernard Culture Fund Award for her graduation film ‘The Secret Of Boccherini', an intimate portrait of her father, the cellist Anner Bylsma. Since then she has been working back-to-back on documentaries on high profile artists in music and in art, which have been shown at festivals around the world. 

 

  Photo credit: Hulya Killicaslan

      

Her film Soloist, on violinist Rosanne Philippens, was received very well, stating in the jury rapport of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) ;  

 

'So sensitive is Bijlsma’s evocation of the two strands to Rosanne’s life, that there are moments that one wonders how such intimacy could possibly be captured on film. Soloist goes far beyond a simple portrait of a musician, in it’s sensitivity and intimacy, it is unique.'   

 

She won an Honorable Mention at the DOXA film festival in Vancouver for her film Extase on conductor, composer, pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, stating:

 

“ This film captures the transcendent power of music through the journey of an impassioned conductor as he instills in the viewer a belief of the necessity of art in all our lives." 

 

She went on to make documentaries on composer Louis Andriessen, 

actress Elsie de Brauw and choreographer Alain Platel and, most notably, 

Devils’s Pie on singer D’Angelo, which was 7 years in the making. 

 

Her documentary about soul singer D'Angelo: "Devil's Pie", premiered at 

Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, garnering rave reviews and several awards and nominations internationally such as

Best of the Festival at the Gary International Black Film Festival, Best Music Documentary at the DTLA film festival, an Honorable Mention audience award at the Black Harvest film Festival and a Gouden Kalf nomination for Best Documentary. 

“An intimate and revealing portrait of a legend-in-the-making, Devil’s Pie—D’Angelo buzzes with the soulful intensity of its subject (…)

Bijlsma has crafted a remarkably energizing film, buoyed by an amazing soundtrack (… ) she gets to the heart of a sometimes enigmatic man. Sure to be heralded as a quintessential music documentary”.

Devil’s Pie was on the list for “2019’s biggest music documentaries” by USA today.

 

Apart from her work as a documentary filmmaker, she works as a photographer having her work printed in both magazines and albums, amongst which D’Angelo’s Black Messiah (2014). She has also been a guest lecturer at the

Dutch Film and Television Academy (NFTA) and NYU Tisch school of the arts. Twice a film of hers was picked by a zomergasten guest.