Okke Ornstein is from the Netherlands. He studied political science, worked for an institute that provided training to workers’ councils and went to the Academy for Photography. Followed courses at the Amsterdam Theater School (directing drama for film) and Open Studio Video Center (documentary production). Worked at a professional photo lab. He started his career as a video editor, over the years putting together countless TV programs, documentaries, corporate videos and drama productions on everything from offline VHS to Avid and Final Cut Pro.

For over a year, Ornstein worked for advertising agency McCann-Erickson as an RTV producer, producing radio and TV commercials as well as corporate videos for international clients.

As a director and editor in chief, he made a variety of TV programs. The wildly successful Taxi show won the Golden Rose at the Montreux Television Festival and Urbania the European Prix Iris. With actors Maarten Spanjer and Rijk de Gooijer he made a docu-comedy about retiring in Monaco and several short segments for a talkshow the two hosted. Also with Maarten Spanjer he directed a series about alternative therapies and several other programs, including one in which we had Spanjer organize the Olympic Winter Games for Handicapped children.

For TROS and KRO television he made Post 13 and Mayday, both documentary series about rescue services. He worked as a segment producer/director for De Rijdende Rechter (a television-judge show) and Nieuw Nederlands Peil (a series about sustainable entrepreneurship).

With TV biologist Midas Dekkers he made Gefundenes Fressen, a much viewed satirical biological cooking show.

Other TV work includes a documentary on bullfighting, political campaign spots, various international news reports for 2 Vandaag and RTL News about issues ranging from the Montesinos case to tropical reforestation, a documentary for RVU television about Porsche salesmen and a documentary series about the Amsterdam Red Light District.

He worked as editor in chief for two so-called “reality shows", spin-offs of the popular Big Brother format: The Bus for SBS6 and The Bar for Yorin.

Ornstein hosted two shows on the former Talkradio station in Holland. He produced a radio documentary for the RVU and continues to do radio work as a correspondent for Wereldnet.

Written work: Interviews for Joods Journaal, a Jewish magazine; coverage of the Thea “the Godmother” Moear case for newspaper Het Parool. Ornstein is a regular contributor to Florida based NewsMax magazine for which he went to report from Afghanistan among other assignments. Ornstein’s work is also frequently published in the Narco News Bulletin and The Panama News. Other publications that have published Ornstein’s work include La Prensa and El Siglo, both Panamanian newspapers and De Journalist as well as De Nieuwe Reporter. He published The Noriegaville News for some years (a combination of investigative journalism, satire, analysis and opinion) until threats were getting out of hand and he closed it down.

Ornstein worked as a consultant - until he resigned in July 2008 - for the election campaign of Miguel Antonio Bernal, a well known human rights activist who runs for mayor of Panama City. Ornstein also does consultancy work in the field of the so-called “new media” and designs dynamic websites using various content management systems.

Ornstein gave courses in video editing for Open Studio and the Audio Visual Center, and video news editing at the Journalism School.

He moved to Panama, Central America, in 2001 and is now regarded as somewhat of a Panama expert, consulted by for example such institutions as the Washington based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, some European Union development aid groups and diplomats.

Ornstein is writing a book, is starting up a book publishing company and runs the award-winning website Bananama Republic.

His new publication is The Isthmian; news aggregation and original stories from Panama and the Central American isthmus.

Ornstein can be contacted by email: okke@ornstein.org
Phone Holland: +31 30 8903456
Phone Panama: +507 6563-7475
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