Hans Beerekamp

In 1976, Beerekamp entered the film quiz Voor een briefkaart op de eerste rang.[1] He proved almost unbeatable and won three rounds (the maximum) of the TV show. Because of his detailed film knowledge, he was asked to write about film for the newspaper De Waarheid. At the time, Beerekamp was assistant to educational innovator Co van Calcar at the Research Institute for Applied Psychology (RITP).[2]

After the departure of film journalist Ab van Ieperen from NRC Handelsblad in 1977, Beerekamp succeeded him,[2] before which he broke off his doctoral studies in psychology and began writing about film full-time.[2]

Also, since 1981, Beerekamp has been editor-in-chief of the (Dutch) Film Yearbook, a reference work on all films released in cinemas in the Netherlands in the previous year. For the Filmkrant and later the film magazine Skrien, Beerekamp wrote The Big Sleep, a column on recently deceased film personalities. At the Filmmuseum, later Eye, he showed film excerpts of recently deceased film personalities in his program Het Schimmenrijk.[3] Since 2014, this program can be seen at the Amsterdam cinema Het Ketelhuis.[3]

Hans Beerekamp became a television critic for the NRC Handelsblad in 2004. In this capacity, he could occasionally be seen on De Wereld Draait Door,[3] often with Volkskrant colleague Jean-Pierre Geelen.[4] In his daily column Zap, he discussed Dutch television, which he watched 13–14 hours a day for his column.[4][5] On July 7, 2017, the last Zap appeared.[6] He discontinued the column for health reasons.[7]

In 2006, Beerekamp participated in the first season of De Slimste Mens. He made it to the final but lost in the final round to Jeroen Kijk in de Vegte. Since 2013, he has held a daily Twitquiz on Twitter,[5] which has been won several times by writer Pieter Steinz[4] (in 2014 and 2015) and several times by editor Vincent Schmitz (in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020).