The Work
A filmmaker who has a YouTube channel. Not a YouTuber with film credits. Van has been early to every medium he's touched.
The Spirited Man
Monthly show about tools, craft, and using AI to live more analog. YouTube. Supported by paying members on Patreon.
A Space Program
Feature film, co-written with Tom Sachs. Premiered at SXSW. Nationwide theatrical release. Documents Sachs's full-scale space program. Built entirely by hand in a New York studio. From training through "launch." Van directed and produced.
Guggenheim Berlin
Exhibition at the Guggenheim, Berlin. Van's work shown in a major institutional art context: the kind of venue that doesn't invite YouTubers.
The Neistat Brothers
8-episode HBO series, with Casey Neistat. Personal filmmaking at broadcast scale. Made during the early YouTube era, before "creator" was a category. The show was Van and Casey doing what they'd been doing with cameras since childhood, except HBO was paying for it.
Paradox Bullets
Collaboration with Werner Herzog. When Werner Herzog invites you to make a film together, that's not a YouTube collab. That's a different register entirely.
iPod's Dirty Secret
Short film that crashed Yahoo's servers and forced Apple to change their product warranty policy. This was 2003. Two years before YouTube existed. Van made a film about Apple's refusal to replace iPod batteries, spray-painted the message on iPod ads across Manhattan, and the video spread so fast it took down Yahoo's video hosting. Apple announced a battery replacement program within weeks.
This is the earliest proof that Van makes things that move culture at scale. Twenty years later, the register hasn't changed. Only the distribution has.
Collaborators
Van's work sits adjacent to people who don't typically appear on a mid-tier YouTube channel's résumé: Tom Sachs (artist, co-wrote A Space Program), Werner Herzog (filmmaker), the Safdie brothers, Jack Conte (CEO of Patreon), Frank Ocean, Tory Burch, Rich Roll, Bert Kreischer, and Casey Neistat.