- Haanstra experimented in the sixties with his cinematic techniques. In Zoo he experimented with hidden camera filming to capture the true nature of both man and beast.
- His short film called, Zoo was released on the 14th of December, 1962. It was a film which compared the behavior of animals and humans through his always appreciated humoristic fashion.
- Father of Rimko Haanstra and Jurre Haanstra.
- Honorary president of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 409-414. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
- Graduated from the Academy of Arts, Amsterdam.
- In the late 30s he mostly worked as an painter and photographer.
- In 1952 he began to work for The Royal Dutch Shell Film Unit.
- In 1956 he became producer and manager by Shell Film Unit, in Venuzuela.
- In 1960 founded Bert Haanstra Filmproductie.
- Folkert Haanstra and Jansje Schuiveling were his parents. His father was a head schoolteacher.
- In 1996 Bert Haanstra was name-giver and first winner of the 'Bert Haanstra Ouvre Prijs', he got the price from: Het Nederlands Fonds voor Film (The Dutch Funds for Movies).
- Received several medals, he was crowned Officier/Knight and Member in de orde van Oranje Nassau, he received the resistance-remembrance-cross, The Great Cross, Great-resistance Commandeur. Some of these where given/crowned by Queen Wilhelmina and Queen Juliana.
- Due to budget issues, Jacques Tati's 1971 film 'Trafic', in which Monsieur Hulot drives from Paris to Amsterdam, was co-directed by Haanstra.
- In 2004, Bert Haanstra finished at number 109 in the election of ''De Grootste Nederlander'' (The Greatest Dutchman).
- He was the first Dutch filmmaker who won an Academy Award, for his short film Glass (1958) (''Glass'').
- After his death the Oeuvre Award, a prestigious Dutch prize for film, (Haanstra had won one himself), was renamed the Bert Haanstra Oeuvre Award.
- In the long documentary Ape and Super-Ape (Bij de Beesten af) (1973), for which he collaborated with Frans de Waal and Jane Goodall, among others, he compared the behavior of animals and human beings.
- Abroad his movie ' Fanfare' was hardly noticed, but it was entered into the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and the 1st Moscow International Film Festival.
- Haanstra was Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.
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