Louis Alphonse van Gasteren (Amsterdam, 20 November 1922) is a Dutch film director, film producer, and artist. He is the son of the actor Louis van Gasteren Sr. and the concert-singer Elise Menagé Challa.

Biography

Van Gasteren studied electronics and became a sound engineer. On the advice of the director Alberto Cavalcanti he became trainee as a sound-effects man at Épernay Studios in Paris and worked for the Dutch Polygoon newsreel company in Haarlem, Netherlands in 1949. In 1951 he started his own film production company Spectrum Film. He made his debut with Brown Gold, a film about cocoa and chocolate in 1952. In 1983 Van Gasteren won the Dutch Film Critics Award for best documentary as well as the Golden Calf for best picture for Hans: Het Leven Voor De Dood (Hans, Life Before Death). He received the Golden Calf a second time in 2003 for his documentary The Price of Survival. Van Gasteren was a visiting professor in the United States at UCLA and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University.

Van Gasteren lives in Amsterdam and is married to Joke Meerman. He is the oldest active filmmaker in the Netherlands.