Our Pioneer in LA, USA: Vera Bulder

Like most kids her age, our Pioneer Vera Bulder moved to the US at 17 on a gap year, but ended up making it her home for over the past decade. Today the model turned founder & producer at Deux Dames Entertainment is part of a new, young generation of moving image creators in LA, with ambitions to tell unconventional stories through genre defying work.

Through our Pioneers series, in collaboration with Nils Adriaans, we catch up with members of the Dutch Creative Community living abroad and ask them to send back personal ‘messages in a bottle’ about life away from the Netherlands.

Why are you where you are right now?

My path has been a pretty unconventional one. I grew up in Amsterdam and graduated high school aged seventeen. My plan was to go to acting school, but felt I wasn’t ready to commit to another schooling environment just yet. So like most kids my age, I took gap year and moved to NYC. The gap year turned into 10 years in the US, with intermittent breaks back in Holland. At one point I did go to acting school, but only lasted for a semester.

I didn’t like it, after my time abroad I felt like an alien and was less committed to the die hard structure that comes with traditional acting schools in Holland. So, I dropped out and moved back to New York. It turned out that finding acting work as a foreigner without much experience is incredibly hard, so I did modeling as a way to make ends meet.

What I hated most about modeling is showing up to work, and people treating you like a model, not a human. No one takes you seriously or has anything interesting to offer, those prejudices are true. My best friend Clara McGregor and I were in the same boat, both doing a little modeling, and a little acting, but always feeling like we had little control over the work creatively. That feeling ultimately lead us to start our own film production company, Deux Dames Entertainment. Producing has allowed us to be involved in every aspect of making a film, which has been incredibly liberating.

What makes you feel at home?

I don’t really have any strong feelings about any particular object I own. Some pictures of family perhaps, a few pieces of art, but my favorite thing is to purge, and keep my belongings quite minimal. That probably stems from traveling and moving around so much. So I’d say my husband, Jake, and two dogs Walter and Pippa make me feel at home most. The dogs we picked up from shelters, and have enriched our lives infinitely. Jake and I spent several months in New Mexico last year, working on several movies back to back. We stayed in different places during that time, and having the dogs and Jake to come home to made it all worthwhile.

What stands out the most there (professionally)?

I like living and working in the US because things move at a different pace. There is a vast misconception about Americans being “fake nice” in the eyes of Europeans. In my opinion, Americans just don’t succumb to negativity as much in the way that especially Dutch people can. Whenever I visit Amsterdam that is my biggest hiccup.

People here tend to focus more on themselves, and don’t waste as much time analyzing other what other people do. That is refreshing, it allows for a more open environment and a real sense of living in the present.

What is your Random Pic(k) Of The Week?

I don’t read books, unfortunately. I inherited that from my dad. I can’t focus on them, can’t bring myself to sit down and just read. I don’t know why that is, but it’s incredibly frustrating. I love going to the movies. I just saw Everything, Everywhere All at Once. While I didn’t necessarily love every part of the film, I was blown away by it. It is so original and eccentric, and such an audacious take on filmmaking. It is films like this that make me want to move the needle in my own work. Dare to think in unconventional ways.

Who’s the most outstanding creative over there?

My local heroes are fellow Dutch filmmakers Emma Westenberg and Sophie Hardeman. We became friends on a project in Amsterdam years ago, and we all moved to the US at some point. They are original thinkers, incredibly gifted artists and I trust them blindly. I worship their creative talent, and in an ideal world would only work with them for the rest of my life. Emma directed my latest film, which Sophie designed the costumes for. It was such a magical turning point in all of our careers, getting to work together on something so special. I cannot wait to show the world what we made.

What ‘souvenir’ would you bring home?

I used to think I’d move back to Holland at some point in my life, but now I don’t think that I will. I’ve been away for too long, my life is here now. I’d have to completely start over in Amsterdam. I will be making a bigger effort to work in Europe more in the next few years. I’m producing a project out of France, and would love to live there for a few years. I also have a wonderful community in London and love British humor, so I wouldn’t mind moving there either. That is the wonderful thing about this industry- if you’re lucky, you get to see and do it all. Fingers crossed!