A lot of people claim to be storytellers but Joris Debeij is probably one of the most legitimate storytellers in the truest sense of the word. He isn’t writing about celebrity news or pushing products that are sent to him or making very OK art and calling it “storytelling.” No: he is speaking with Angelenos whose stories have not been heard and is telling them by way of bite-sized, finely crafted, easy to consume videos served up on his website, I Am Los Angeles. Joris is a one man production machine, creating video after video around the little and big people who make Los Angeles the fantastic city that it is.

Joris is here completely by chance. He was born and raised in the Netherlands, where he grew up in the countryside eventually going to college in Haarlem, a city near Amsterdam. “For a long time, I didn’t know what to do,” he said regarding his field of study. “I studied media and entertainment management. It wasn’t that exciting; but it got me involved with what I am doing now. I started working for this company called Fabchannel, where we recorded concerts from two main music venues in Amsterdam and would broadcast them online. It was supposed to be a stage for start-up bands. It was really fun.”

Fabchannel ended up affording him a lot–even his trip to Los Angeles. “I eventually ended up in LA because I had to write my final paper for school and the music company wanted to expand their business. So, I was like, ‘I’ll go to LA and sort of check it out and see what’s out there.’”

As Joris finished up his paper for school in 2009, Fabchannel went under, a victim of the then very fragile economy. Instead of heading back home, he found Los Angeles to be a pretty great place and decided to stay. “I really started to like LA,” he said, “I thought it was a really interesting city and that there were hardly any journalists from the Netherlands out here, as opposed to New York or Washington.”

“I remember the first time I flew in,” he explains, constructing a mental picture. “It was at night and I saw lights and thought, ‘Oh, we’re here: I see the city!’ But, then you fly for ten minutes over lights and lights and lights. It’s such a large area.”

Los Angeles is unlike anything else he’s experienced. Like many, the city was seen as this mythical and impossible place you only see in the movies. “If you look around, there’s so much,” he says. “Every day you discover new stuff. In Europe, you grow up with Hollywood films and think that’s all LA is. I remember American Pie 2 and other movies where you’d see ‘youth culture’ and high schools and gangs and whatever. It was absolutely intriguing. When I was younger, I remember hanging out with a friend and we were talking. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you grew up in the US?’ The US has always been something that was a big interest.”

This interest, which grew more from being in Los Angeles, was the catalyst for his baby, I Am Los Angeles. The site launched on January 1, 2011, in the very first wave of sites dedicated to profiling and celebrating Angelenos and Los Angeles. “In the beginning, I was searching a lot,” he said, relating the project to his journalistic work. “It was a busy year, as I produced two whole series of Dutch television shows. One was more like The Celebrity Apprentice and the other was a new show called Holland In Da Hood, where they take kids from the Netherlands and put them here, near USC. It was kind of funny.”

“I did some entertainment show stuff and I realized that everyone does film in LA. It’s such an obvious thing. But, everyone focuses on the crime and the fame,” Joris says. “I’m very interested in the human interest stories. I like the stories of normal people in unusual situations or unusual people in normal situations. I think thats very interesting: normal people who have a dream.”

And that is exactly what I Am Los Angeles has become: a space to share people from all of the city who have interesting stories. “There’s so much more to this city and I kind of wanted to show that, to show these stories you may not see anywhere else. Plus, it’s a nice way to discover LA more. I really liked the Dreamer video, which was about a homeless vet who gives free haircuts at the Veterans Association in West LA.”

“In the beginning, I was doing everything myself,” he says, “I have three friends in the Netherlands who do the music (they’re The Pilots). In a way, it’s hard for me to work with other people on this project. But, in a way, it’s also hard to find people who want to do things for a labor of love, when there’s hardly a budget for it. It’s hard to find people who see things the way you see. I guess when you have money you can do more.”

His sentiment is something we can certainly echo, illustrating a recent movement in pride not only within Los Angeles but in various cities, surrounding various crafts. “LA is just such an interesting place where so many things emerge,” Joris says. “In a way, [I Am Los Angeles] emerged out of my curiosity toward a lot of things. And, you can get so much from an individual story. The Chase video is an example of that, the story following a Belgium guy who wanted to do stuff that he liked to do–and he just went for it. And, it works. I knew he was from Belgium and thought he was interesting but this great story came out of it.”

“I don’t criticize anything in my portraits: they’re all positive,” he says, pointing to one of the reasons why his videos are so powerful: they are unbiased and compelling. “They are all propaganda for LA. It’s my way to show people the different faces LA has because LA obviously gets a bad wrap sometimes. From a European point of view, when people come to LA, lots of people do the tour through California and go to San Francisco, which has a very nice look. LA has a look as well–but you have to find them a little more. The Victorian houses in Angeleno Heights are great but, when someone comes for a visit, they don’t know that exists. They go to Venice Boardwalk and the Santa Monica Pier and Hollywood Boulevard. Those aren’t the places they go!”

Things are changing though for Joris’ stories, which may be the nature of he and his work aging. “I’m starting to do longer stories, which I haven’t published yet,” he says. “I just finished a documentary about a guy who lived in East LA and, eighteen and a half years ago, his daughter and granddaughter were killed. He’s still seeking the killer. That story has so many themes atop of not letting go, unresolved murders, etc.”

Los Angeles was never in the cards for Joris but he’s happy to be here. If he wasn’t here, he’d likely be pursuing the same things–just back home. “I’d probably still be in the Netherlands, working in television. LA was sort of a road I could go to. Now I’m on that road and haven’t looked back. It’s been a good ride.”

Joris sees the expansion of the brand in the future, first making the most obvious jump: I Am Amsterdam. “I’m working with friends in the Netherlands to start up I Am Amsterdam. It’s sort of a dream to also do London and New York and a couple of other places, with groups of people who want to do the same thing. I Am Los Angeles is the example and they’ll fill things in with what they find. It’d be great to have a bunch of cities, with younger people working on portraits of people, serving multiple purposes.”

“The most ideal situation is if I could always keep storytelling in some form, which can be for anything,” Joris says. “As long as I could tell stories, it would be really cool. That’s the main thing for all the I Ams. It’s funny: I got an e-mail from a guy in a small town in Canada, asking if he could start ‘I Am Saskatoon.’ I say start it! As long as you can do that, great. It was nice of him to ask.”

For more on Joris, be sure to follow him on Twitter and follow I Am Los Angeles on Twitter and Like them on Facebook. The newest I Am Los Angeles portrait will be going live later this month, “about one of LA’s biggest problems, homelessness.” I Am Amsterdam should be going live soon, hopefully within two to three months.