Belgian cinema
Related: Michel Apers - Belgium - BIFFF - Cinema Nova - cinema - Man Bites Dog (1992)
C'est Arrivé Pres de Chez Vous/Man Bites Dog (1992) - Rémy Belvaux André Bonzel, ... [Amazon.com]
Aaltra (Gustave Kervern, Benoit Delepine, Belgium)
A Belgian road movie about disability... I know what you're going to say, butAaltra is the most evil-minded fun anyone has had in the cinema with two wheelchairs and the open road. The two directors, Kervern and Delepine, play two avowed enemies who wind up paraplegic after an agricultural accident. They head off to Finland to complain to the company that made the offending machinery. En route, they manage to offend and/or exploit just about everyone foolish enough to give them the time of day. The film uses dazzling black-and-white photography to make the most of its outrageous sight gags, but much of the humour comes from the characters that the film encounters along the way - including some of the most forlorn karaoke singers ever filmed. --Jonathan Romney, http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/story.jsp?story=573527 [Oct 2004]
Malpertuis (1971) - Harry Kümel
poster for Malpertuis (1971), film adaptation by Harry Kümel
image sourced here. [Mar 2005]
Malpertuis (1943) est le premier roman fantastique de l'écrivain belge Jean Ray, publié en 1943. Le ton est onirique et le suspense, inquiétant. Le fantastique repose sur les grands mythes grecs et l'abolition de l'espace et du temps.
Le vieux Cassave, qui se sent proche de la mort, contraint une quinzaine de personnes à vivre ensemble dans une vieille maison flamande, Malpertuis. Jean-Jacques Grandsire, le jeune héros « candide », vit parmi ces êtres étranges et se trouve, à la fin de la première partie, seul face à Euryale dont le regard pétrifie. Dans la suite, Jean-Jacques essaie de dénouer l'énigme de Malpertuis mais les scènes terribles auxquelles il assiste, l'ombre des maléfices et le souffle du sacré vont perturber gravement sa santé.
Construit sur un enchâssement de manuscrits, le roman multiplie les voix narratives. --http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpertuis [Mar 2005]
See also: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0067386 [Mar 2005]
Malpertuis, A Pagan and Catholic and Gothic and Carnivalesque and Modernist and Surrealist Tragedy
The term “grotesque” originates in Italy during the early Renaissance, when decorative motifs representing a then unknown Roman aesthetic were uncovered during the excavation of some old bathing grottos. Plants, animals, people, monsters and gods all woven together in long slender ribbons of illustration on the walls; these grotesques were pictorial where arabesques were abstract, and seemed to trace an open-ended sequence of transformations through a play of interlacing forms. The term swiftly developed all sorts of applications as European art became more diverse, and, by the time it was applied to works of literature, it had come to mean especially fanciful, even weirdly imaginative. The grotesque was still the underworld, and it referred to that art most saturated with imaginary things, and the most wildly imagined things. The grotesque was associated with the seemingly incessant European carnivals, in which all established order would be inverted, opposites like ugliness and beauty, life and death, comedy and tragedy, would be brought so close together as to be crushed nearly into each other. --Michael Cisco via http://www.themodernword.com/columns/cisco_005.html [Mar 2005]
Carnival in Flanders (1935) - Jacques Feyder
Carnival in Flanders (1935) - Jacques Feyder [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
A very funny, saucy French historical comedy, directed by Jacques Feyder, with production assistance by Marcel Carne (who was just on the cusp of his own directorial career)... The story is set in the Flemish town of Boom, in 1616, after the Spanish conquest of the region... When the royal troops announce their intention to billet in the town on their way across country, the village's male population proves so wimpy that it's left up to the womenfolk (led by Francoise Rosay, who is a brilliant actress) to save the town. It's unfortunate that this video version has such incomplete subtitling -- all the racier jokes get glided over, and the text is kept to a bare minimum. But even non-Francophone ingoramuses like myself get how clever and bawdy this film is. Cute. Apparently, this also had a powerful influence on manhy of the costume dramas which came in its wake. --Joe Sixpack via Amazon.com
This gem from 1935 by Belgian-French director Feyder is still wonderfully vibrant and witty. In 1616, the Flemish village of Boom is indulging in its annual fair when a Spanish army is approaching and panic ensues. The women of the village take up action for welcoming the Spaniards while the men hide, but seek the credit later. Movie was accused of slander against the Catholic Church and the 'official' history of Flanders. The reconstruction of Breughelian images is stunning. A painting comes to life. --via amazon.com
Belgian cinema
Belgian Cinema/Le Cinema Belge/De Belgische Film - Marianne Thys, Cinematheque Royale De Belgique [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Belgian cinema may not be as familiar as French or Italian, but this trilingual (English/French/Dutch) volume from the Royal Belgian Film Archive is essential for any comprehensive international film library. The more than 1600 "Belgian" films represented here are all Belgian-financed; entries may have been produced in any of about 40 countries. Silent and sound films are treated equally, with one page and a black-and-white photo devoted to each film; all genres (experimental, feature, animated, and documentary) are covered. While the volume is not a history, it provides some background throughout on the Belgian film industry. The chronological arrangement forces readers to use the indexes of names and film titles, but that is a minor irritation. Highly recommended for all film collections. --Anthony J. Adam, Prairie View A&M Univ. Lib., Houston via Amazon.com
BELGIAN CINEMA describes in a lively style 100 years of Belgian cinematic production. This extensively illustrated, tri-lingual volume presents a chronological outlook on national production between 1896 and 1996. The idea was for a serious reference volume which would serve as a basis for the work of journalists, students and academics as well as film restorers and archivists. Finally, in compiling this publication we also set ourselves the goal of opening a gateway, allowing the material filmed in our country to reach a wider audience not (yet) familiar with Belgian cinema and its history. --Book Description via Amazon.com
The sources employed the film collection of the Royal Film Archive naturally, but also contributions from other collections and, above all, countless written sources permitted the discovery of an important and relatively little known cinematic production. The results take the form of a filmography divided into two parts: the silent era and the sound cinema. Given that the information to be found on the first three decades of cinema in Belgium is as surprising as it is scarce, we have chosen to take a closer look at film production during that era and cover every individual work, regardless of length. To bring clarity into this more nebulous period of history, we have divided the section on the silent era into three periods or chapters. These three chapters have themselves been subdivided into a series of thematic - though not necessarily systematic - sections, where each film has its place. The remainder of the book is devoted to the sound era. Here, all sound films of mor! ! e than 60 minutes in length are listed in chronological order, year by year, film by film. Fiction and documentary, animation, art and experimental film - all genres are represented here. Each is covered by a single page comprising a column of credit details / technical data, an illustration and a text in English, French and Dutch. The texts not only describe the contents of the film, but also consider the production history of the work, the career of the director or members of its cast and the reception of the film. They reflect the individual characteristics of the film and try to place it in its historical context. The texts as a whole thus give an overview of 100 years of Belgian cinema history. This book is not a film history. Yet readers will be surprised to discover, turning the pages on a whim or with the simple desire to revisit old flames and happen across new, that this weighty volume expands in unexpected directions. It becomes an endless puzzle in which loving study can discern, guided by the thread of our films, the living history of our century.(André Delvaux) --via Amazon.com
Jacques Ledoux a initié ce travail gigantesque il y a dix ans mais c'est Marianne Thys qui l'a conçu et réalisé. Avec l'aide de collaborateurs comme Jacqueline Aubenas Guido Convents, Paul Geens, André Joassin Serge Meurant et bien d'autres que nous ne pouvons tous citer ici). En cent ans d'existence, 1.647 titres de films belges de long métrage, du muet au parlant, du documentaire à la fiction. Le tout en 1.000 pages avec un répertoire des titres et un index des noms. Un travail de titan qui a nécessité plus de sept ans de recherches en tout genre dans le patrimoine existant (sous forme de pellicule ou sous forme de trace écrite). Ajoutons-y une iconographie riche et remarquablement imprimée et, on comprendra à quel point ce dictionnaire est un ouvrage de référence indispensable. Nous avons demandé à Marianne Thys, maître d'oeuvre de l'ouvrage, de nous en expliquer l'élaboration ainsi que les arcanes de ce cinéma belge qui ne cesse de faire l'actualité. Entretien. --http://www.cinergie.be/cinergie/revue33/debat.html#1a [Apr 2005]