Kurt Vandendriessche

Kurt Vandendriessche is a Belgian actor, theatre director and performer.

Television Vandendriessche made his debut on television in 1997 whilst finishing his actor's training at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He played the role of Fréderique Bastiaens in the national television drama series Thuis for two seasons. Some years later he played a regular part in the commercial television series Spoed, as the character of Tom Gijsbrecht.

During the past two decades he also featured in many guest roles mainly on Flemish television. Amongst others in Heterdaad, Recht op Recht, Flikken, Witse, Rupel, Zone Stad, Rang 1, Vermist, Aspe en Familie.

Film In 2007 he played Raymond in the movie Firmin, directed by Dominique Deruddere and based on the character of Chris Van Den Durpel. In 2012 he accepted the male lead role in Welcome Home, a low budget film directed by Tom Heene. The movie was internationally acclaimed and was nominated for the Luigi de Laurentiis Award for Best Debut on the Venice Film Festival and for one of the three Zenith Awards on Montreal World Film Festival. One year later, it competed in les Magrittes du Cinéma, the Walloon Community movie awards, for Best Flemish Co-production.

From time to time Vandendriessche also acts in short films - among others Saint James Infirmary (2010), directed by Leni Huyghe who received the award for Best Debut on the International Short Film Festival of Leuven, and Nkosi Coiffure (2015) from filmmaker and actress Frederike Migom, which was selected in the short film competition of the Montreal World Film Festival. Together with his brother, film director Benny Vandendriessche, he shot the short film Front (2014), commissioned by the Museum aan de Yzer. A drama set in the trenches and a tribute to the soldiers who experienced shell shock during World War I.

Theater Throughout his career Vandendriessche focused mainly on theater performance. In 1999, he made his debut as the groom in Federico García Lorca’s Bloodwedding. That same year he played the role of a homeless teen in Wolves, a location-based creation inspired by the photograph book Raised by wolves by Jim Goldberg. After that he stood at the side of Flemish theatre icon Nand Buyl in the first Belgian creation of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the National Theatre in Antwerpen (Toneelhuis). In 2000, he joined the puppet theatre company Figurentheater De Maan for two years and over that period acquired substantial experience in puppeteering.

Following that, Vandendriessche performed in Jan Decorte's play Cirque Danton (2002), which is where he met Charlotte Vanden Eynde. Together with her, he created the duet Map Me (2003) which received the prize of Best Dance Creation by the SACD. The piece toured for five years successfully throughout Europe and concluded with a mini tour in the US, passing through the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Portland's Time-Based Art Festival and Dance Theatre Workshop in New York.

Meanwhile, he attended a scenography course at the Ecole de Promotion Sociale Saint-Luc in Brussels and POPOK in Antwerp and in 2004 he created the light and stage design for Charlotte Vanden Eynde's Beginnings/Endings, which premiered on the Springdance Festival in Utrecht and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels

From 2003 until 2007 he ran the theatre collective Scharlaken Dak together with theatre director and playwright Luc Frans. Their second production Mercurochroom (2004) received praise by the press and was mentioned in the newspaper De Morgen as one of the trend setting youth theatre productions of that year. In 2007 the company ceased to exist by lack of means of subvention.

In 2004 he collaborated for the first time with Jan Fabre, one of Belgium's leading visual artists and theatre directors, on the production Parrots & Guinea Pigs. Some years later he joined the company again for a permanent replacement in Orgy of Tolerance (2010), as Prometheus in Prometheus: Landscape II (2011) and in the ensemble piece Tragedy of a Friendship (2012), an opera production on the works of Richard Wagner and his love-hate relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche, commissioned by the Flemish Opera.

For the Holland Festival in Amsterdam (2011–2013), he collaborated with Emio Greco on the dance production Addio alla Fine.

Personal work Throughout his career Vandendriessche also developed his own theatre productions, performances and installations as an independent artist.

In 2010, he created the show Pèrfides together with his five year old-daughter, in which he had himself directed by her. For Collapsus in 2011, a project in which he participated with Ragna Aurich, he guided two young brothers in the creation of a personal sci fi-story on brotherhood and rivalry.

That same year he wrote and directed the piece KooiVogelDroom for Figurentheater De Maan - the story of a confused young child who learns to conquer his fears by learning to take responsibility for himself and others. For this piece he adapted a procedure of mixed media techniques - set in a blue key studio, he directly captured and edited the manipulation of scale models and landscapes made out of modified picture prints resulting in a live animation film.

In 2012 he formed K&K together with his colleague Kasper Vandenberghe. A satirical duo and situationist questioning of the vulnerable position of the performance artist and his economic potential. In that year, they sporadically showed stand up-performances and had themselves advised and supported by experts from the advertising industry in a campaign towards their final product launch K&K - Bringin- Home the Bacon.

Filmography Year Title Role Director 2015 Nkosi Coiffure (shortfilm) Stefan Frederike Migom 2014 Follow: Tall tales from a small city Ron Jonas De Vos 2014 Labyrinthus Agent Douglas Boswell 2013 Front (shortfilm) Soldier Benny Vandendriessche 2012 Welcome Home "Benji" Benjamin Tom Heene 2011 Portable Life Gypsyman Fleur Boonman 2010 Saint-James Infirmary (shortfilm) Lars Leni Huyghe 2007 Firmin Raymond Dominique Deruddere 2004 TV-Dinner Frank Ian Swerts

Television roles Year Serie Title Role Episode 2014 Vermist Jimmy Michel Dierckx S05 E10 2013 Familie Daniël Verbeele SE23 E07-40 2013 Binnenstebuiten Bij nader inzien Tom Bertels SE01 E36 2012 Aspe Verdwenen Bram SE09 E08 2012 Familie garagist Rudy SE22 E85-89 2011 Vermist Dina Jelle Waegemans SE03 E05 2011 Rang 1 Ief SE01 E01 2010 Witse Achter de waarheid Viggo Lanssens SE07 E13-14 2010 Zone Stad Ontsnapt Marc Vercruysse SE05 E07 2009 Flikken Bonnie & Clyde Dean De Vos SE10 E05-05 2007 Spoed Tom Gijsbrecht SE10 E06-12 2005 Rupel Met lege handen Wim Haak SE02 E01 2005 Zone Stad Het huwelijk novice agent Gert SE02 E13 2005 Witse Diabolo Bart Brock SE02 E09 2004 Spoed Tom Gijsbrecht SE07 E01-10 2003 Flikken Sporen Daan De Witte SE05 E06 2003 Chris & Co Toast Kannibaal 2002 Spoed De nieuwe Steve Vermandel SE04 E34 2001 Recht op Recht Dochterlief Matt SE03 E07 2001 W817 DJ SE03 E32 2000 F.C. De Kampioenen Jonger dan je denkt Maxime SE11 E02 2000 De Kotmadam Speldenkussen agent SE09 E04 1999–2000 Thuis Fréderique Bastiaens SE05 E34-163 1998 Heterdaad Junkie SE03 E08 1997 De Kotmadam Jef maakt het bont Joerie SE06 E06 1996–1997 Thuis Fréderique Bastiaens SE01 E175-SE 03