Jan van IJken Photography and Film

Planktonium is a short film about the unseen world of living microscopic plankton. It is a voyage into a secret universe, inhabited by alien-like creatures. These stunningly beautiful, very diverse and numerous organisms are unknown to most of us because they are invisible to the naked eye. Howev...

BECOMING is a short film about the miraculous genesis of animal life. In great microscopic detail, we see the ‘making of’ a salamander in its transparant egg from fertilization to hatching.

The first stages of embryonic development are roughly the same for all animals, including humans. In the f...

Short film about “murmurations”: the mysterious flights of the Common Starling. It is still unknown how the thousands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms without colliding. Every night the starlings gather at dusk to perform their stunning air show.

Because of the relatively warm winte...

Why do we look away from millions of animals in industrial farms while pampering and humanizing others? In the film Facing Animals pigs, chickens, cows and dogs are the protagonists, humans are the antagonist.

We see the world from the perspective of the animals: chicks are thrown onto a conveyo...