Lester van der Bel

Lester van der Bel was born in the 80's close to The Hague in The Netherlands. He was still very young with being a huge movie fan. Influenced by well known pieces as 'Robocop' by the Dutch Paul Verhoeven and 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', his interest continued to grow. Then the less well known movies came to his attention, like 'Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro' and his still all-time favorite 'Labyrinth' by Jim Henson. Shaped by movies like this at a young age, the first forces that came to pull him towards filming himself, came when he was about 18 years old. In the small town Bilthoven (near Utrecht) he made his first own film with good friends in the neighborhood. This film 'Drug Forest' was in every way his first step to more serious cinema. The crew and cast had great fun recording this and the closed premiere at Bilthoven was a fun event. At that time, no serious public yet, but much experience gained... Lester decided it was time to take it to a much higher level with his film "The Street Project". While still an amateur in the film business, he made an overwhelming ambitious plan to record this movie with a very small budget. By spending a lot of time in recruiting the right people for the job by networking and placing advertisements everywhere on the Internet, he finally got his crew and cast together that all together counted for not less then 100 friends, acquaintances, film students and (semi-)professionals in the business. A unique collection of people that were committed to one thing only: making 'The Street Project (TSP)' a highly entertaining movie. About one and a half year of work finally paid off when the movie was launched at a cinema theater in Utrecht, with having a spectacular independent movie premiere. Off course, Lester continues his journey to the position of top-notch film making by creating new ideas and raising the bar every time with three steps at a time. By new projects as "Gevangen Dans" he's paving the way for himself to work at a more professional level then ever!