Biography
Nathan van Bellen was born on 17th February 1993, in Haarlem, Netherlands on the exact date on which he was promised – he was punctual from the very outset of his life. After completing high school in 2009 and obtaining a degree in Marketing and Sales, he worked for a few years to be able to travel. He spent his earnings on several trips, including ones to the United States, New Zealand, and Japan. Nathan has a large repository of perseverance, flexibility, and inventiveness and is also a fine film-connoisseur. In his childhood years, he demonstrated this creativity, which manifested itself in his stories with a strong cinematographic nature.
Great depth and strong character development characterise Nathan's writing. In addition, his works present sharp social criticism coupled with a great sense of authentic human emotions. One can find much of the premise of destiny and fate in his work – the idea that human life can take a necessary and unchanging turn for the worse. Moreover, his writing is based on the moral theme of good versus evil and those who fall between. He is greatly influenced by cinematic stalwarts such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick – storylines in which unpredictable outcomes are preferred, in order to be fully immersed by the myth and then astonished by its consequences. In addition, Nathan takes great interest in archetypal and mythical themes that highlight the similarities between ancient tales and everyday contemporary reality.
Nathan during his visit to the United States in 2014, pointing towards the famous Golden Gate Bridge like a silly tourist.
Listed below are a few of his personal favourites that he recommended to me, for which I am deeply grateful:
- A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell
And here’s a list of films he thinks so highly of that he’s has their posters framed on his wall.
- The Killing (1956) by Stanley Kubrick
- 2001: A space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick
- Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”