Jacqueline van Meygaarden

Jacqueline van Meygaarden is a documentary filmmaker as well as a theatre-maker. She works as a freelance artist in Cape Town in a variety of visual styles.

Her work in documentary film is primarily concerned with social and environmental issues, and she has worked as a director, producer, researcher and cameraperson on many different projects. In 2007 her short film that promotes solar energy in South Africa, Free Energy, won the top prize in the worldwide Commonwealth Vision Awards 2007. Other recent projects include working as an insert director for national broadcaster SABC, on a series that celebrates trailblazers in community work; producing a video for youth NGO, City at Peace and producing a video for a housing development in the Cape Flats squatter areas. She has also been involved in producing a youth magazine program for MNET, directing an SABC wildlife documentary, editing on a feature film Cape of Good Hope, and her current work-in-progress is a documentary on climate change and energy in South Africa.
She has also completed a series of films for international NGO, Gender CC, on their activities during the United Nations conference on Climate Change in 2008.

Jacqueline’s experience in film, television and theatre design projects began in Johannesburg after graduating from WITS University in 2000 with an honours degree in BA Dramatic Arts. She ongoingly works as a theatre designer as well as a collaborator with The Paper Body Collective as videographer, designer and co-creator of multi-layered work combining video, movement and puppetry. She has toured to Kenya, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic with this company.

In 2008, after establishing her company, Cosmos Productions, she created an environmentally themed visual theatre show, Paraphernalia incorporating puppetry and animation, which performed at Out the Box Visual Theatre Festival in Cape Town and will perform at the National Arts Festival in 2009.
In March 2009 the company created another visual theatre production with climate change themes, Joyce’s Choices which will be performed at various conferences.

Jacqueline also has extensive experience in theatre and film festival management, having worked with the Sithengi Film & TV Market, Encounters Documentary Film Festival and Out the Box Festival of Visual Theatre. Her interests are in developmental projects that create the space for new artists and filmmakers to learn new skills.