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Art on parole

As requirements have increased, applications for Belgian nationality have decreased – and how

Antwerp University invites children to try out a few experiments and attend real live lectures this weekend

A remarkable programme has brought artists together with prison inmates to create work and build self-esteem

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The Rundskop effect

More Flemish actors than ever before are taking the international leap Débora Votquenne More articles by Débora \ flanderstoday.eu

Flemish talent is in hot demand abroad. The result of years of hard work, the particularities of the local scene and one very special Oscar nomination, several Flemish actors and directors have been involved in international productions of late – from British war epics to award-winning Italian dramas

“A

nd the Oscar goes to … A Separation – Iran.” Those were the words spoken by American actor Sandra Bullock as she announced the winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 2011.

Up to the stage walked Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi to collect the coveted golden statue. But not before he had shaken the hand of another nominee, sitting right behind him. That man was Michaël R Roskam, the Flemish director who managed to take his dark drama Rundskop (Bullhead) all the way to Hollywood.

Roskam may not have won that evening, but one thing is sure: His promotional tour in the US didn’t go unnoticed.

“There is interest, and there are people talking to us,” Roskam told reporters on the red carpet. “Doors are opening, and we’ll have to see which ones we step into.”

Not long after, the Brussels-based director was hired to make the American movie The Drop.

And Matthias Schoenaerts, who played the lead in Rundskop, has also moved up to the Premier League. French director Jacques Audiard saw the film before the Oscar nominations and decided to cast Schoenaerts in his well-received De rouille et d’os (Rust and Bone, 2012), next to award-winning French actress Marion Cotillard.

Things only got better after that. Schoenaerts went on to win France’s César for Best Newcomer for his role in Rust and Bone, was called up for a number of international roles and became the face of Louis Vuitton’s 2014 spring/summer collection.

Schoenaerts is not the only Flemish actor who has successfully made the international leap. Flemish talents are in hot demand abroad, in fact. Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Filip Peeters, Geert van Rampelberg and Sam Louwyck are just a few examples of performers who are taking their talents beyond Flemish borders, speaking foreign languages in productions across Europe and – in Schoenaerts’ case – in the US. So what is the secret of these actors’ sudden appeal with

international directors and agents? Casting director Sara De Vries thinks Flemish actors have an exceedingly good ability to fit into diverse environments. “Many of them have the unique talent of being able to easily adapt to different contexts,” she says. “The opportunities they get in Flanders are limited, so they cannot but look further afield. It makes them sensitive to what I call a kind of universal language.”

For De Vries, that universal language means that they are able to perform in a language that isn’t theirs. “They are able to keep their natural flair, even when not acting in their mother tongue – a difficult task, and it makes those who succeed in it much respected abroad.”

De Vries points out that the local film and TV sector has become much more professionalised, most notably with the founding of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund, which represents and promotes the region’s film, TV and gaming industry abroad, in 2002.

“With its actors’ guild, advisory boards, film funds and better communication channels, the sector has become much more professional in the past 20 years,” confirms De Vries. The result of these kinds of strides has been the rising number of international co-productions, she explains, and continued on page 5

\ CURRENT AFFAIRS

Dramatic fall in applications for Belgian nationality New regulations have curtailed the number of foreigners applying for citizenship Derek Blyth More articles by Derek \ flanderstoday.eu

T

he number of people applying for Belgian nationality has dropped off sharply due to tough new rules introduced in 2012 by the previous federal government.

The number of application has plummeted in recent years, from 18,732 in 2013 to just 113 in 2014, according to figures published by Het Laatste Nieuws. And the downward trend looks set to continue, with just 11 people applying for Belgian nationality so far this year.

Despite the sharp drop, authorities are still struggling to clear the backlog of cases waiting to be approved. Some 42,000 applications were still due to be processed at the end of last year, according to the report. More than 2,100 applications have been approved since then, while 1,200 have been rejected.

Police call on Aalst carnivalgoers to help solve murder Police investigating the murder of Sofie D’Hondt during the carnival celebrations in Aalst have called on members of the public to search videos and photos they may have taken on Sunday, 15 February, for clues. D’Hondt, they said, does not appear on footage taken from security cameras.

“During the carnival weekend in Aalst, there were thousands of people present, so someone must have seen or heard something,” commented VTM journalist Faroek Özgünes, whose documentary programme Faroek was used by investigators to launch the appeal.

The 38-year-old from ErpeMere (pictured) was strangled and attacked with a hammer. Carnival-goers found her body two days after the murder. Also found on the scene was a fluffy toy picked up from

© Courtesy Belga

one of the fairground stalls and a child’s schoolbag, which was sold by the local charity shop between 4 and 10 February.

D’Hondt was last seen at an amusement stand in Keizershallen at around 20.30 on Sunday evening.

Police have no information regarding if she was with someone or who that might be. Her partner was questioned shortly after the discovery and later released. Information can be reported on 0800 30 300 or at any police station. \ AH

Tough new procedures were introduced in 2012 to replace the snel-Belgwet procedure, which granted nationality automatically to anyone who had lived in the country for seven years.

Under the new rules, candidates must show that they speak at least one of the three national languages, are integrated into the society and have worked at least 468 days in Belgium during the previous five years. There are also strict requirements concerning any absences from the country, even for short periods.

Residents married to Belgian citizens have far fewer problems and are processed much more quickly.

Critics argue that the new rules prevent many people, such as part-time workers, from applying for nationality.

Mayor of Vilvoorde threatens NMBS with legal action Hans Bonte, the mayor of Vilvoorde, has threatened legal action against rail authority NMBS and the rail infrastructure company Infrabel regarding promised renovation works on his city’s main railway station.

Infrabel announced in early 2014 a budget of €20 million for renovations, which would begin that summer and last six years. Last November, it announced that the works would be postponed because of budgetary constraints.

Vilvoorde station’s platforms, staircases and underground passages are in a severe state of disrepair, and Bonte (SP.A) later threatened to close parts of the station for safety reasons. “There is a consensus here that the station has to be dealt with urgently,” Bonte said in November. “There are safety concerns. It is not accessible to wheelchair users or

Houses in Flemish periphery most expensive in region The most expensive houses in Flanders are in Wezembeek-Oppem, Flemish Brabant, where the average price is €370,000, according to the latest figures from the economy ministry. Neighbouring Kraainem is also high, with an average of €366,950. Both cities are located in the Vlaamse rand, or the Flemish periphery surrounding Brussels.

The most expensive villas, or detached houses, in the region, meanwhile, are found in Knokke-Heist at the coast, where the average price is €1,209,700. Sint-MartensLatem in East Flanders is the most expensive place to buy an apartment, with the average price at €930,500. Houses are more affordable in the town just outside of Ghent, at an average cost of €273,750.

Sint-Martens-Latem has very little apartment stock,

3.5%

growth in core activities for Belgacom in the fourth quarter of 2014, but profits fell 4.7% to €480 million.

The group will pay a dividend of €1 in April

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people with pushchairs. Delay is certainly not an option, unless people think it would be better for the station to close.”

Infrabel said the works would not take place before 2018.

Federal mobility minister Jacqueline Galant was due to visit Vilvoorde last week but had to cancel. “This is a new blow,” responded Bonte. “We hope the minister can soon find the time, though I’ve been told her visit will not take place soon.”

He said the city would “try to force the renovations through by judicial means” and referred to the new station planned at future shopping and leisure centre Uplace in nearby Machelen. “It is unbelievable that renovations in Vilvoorde station are postponed for budgetary reasons, while when it comes to Uplace, funds are available for a new station.” \ AH

which consists almost solely of luxury apartments. The nearest competitor for expensive apartments is KnokkeHeist, where the average is only €456,900.

At the other end of the scale, a house in Ronse, East Flanders, costs only €118,100 on average; a villa in Kinrooi, Limburg, averages €191,167; and an apartment in Zwalm in East Flanders can be had for €133,350.

In the Brussels-Capital Region, Sint-Pieters-Woluwe is the most expensive place to buy an ordinary house, for an average of €481,126, as well as the most expensive apartments at €350,631. Ukkel has the most expensive villas at €1,343,688. Anderlecht is cheapest for houses at €230,464.

The cheapest apartments are in Ganshoren, for an average €142,651. \ Alan Hope

€600,000 1,000

calls a day to the “talking clock” that tells you the current time, a drop from 6,000 a day a decade ago, according to figures from Proximus. Number: 078 051 200

to be invested by the city of Antwerp in the new site of the summer Sinksenfoor fair, including installing lighting and security equipment

26,881 402

students in Brussels will not be able to attend the school of their choice in the next academic year.

There were more than 73,000 visits to the registration website in the first hour

people applied for a grant for home renovations in 2014, 40% more than the year before. Three-quarters of the money went to the renovation of exterior woodwork

march 4, 2015

WEEK in brief The Belgian state has been ordered on appeal to pay compensation of €90,000 to the accused terrorist Nizar Trabelsi for breaching his human rights by extraditing him to the United States. Trabelsi is now in US custody, and his lawyer said he would fight in the courts to stop Belgium from co-operating further with the US on the case against Trabelsi.

Omega Diamonds has been found not guilty by a court in Antwerp in a case brought by customs authorities claiming the business had avoided taxes over the years by importing diamonds on the basis of false invoices. The court ruled that the Belgian customs law could not be enforced because it conflicts with EU law. The case against the company and 11 individuals was thrown out, and with it the claim for €4.6 billion in fines.

Brussels taxi drivers boycotted the presentation of the region’s new taxi plan by mobility minister Pascal Smet and, as Flanders Today went to press, vowed to go ahead with a demonstration on 3 March. The sector is angry that the plan involves creating a new legal framework that would allow alternative services such as Uber to operate, something they consider to be unfair competition.

Male victims of domestic violence can now turn to the country’s first-ever shelter specifically for them, opened at an undisclosed location in the Mechelen area, according to the Centre for General Welfare Work.

Last year, one in 10 women was the victim of domestic violence, the centre said, while the figure for men was one in 20. Cases usually involve violence at the hands of other family members, often in-laws.

face of flanders Belgian fast food restaurant chain Quick has been sent for trial in Brussels on charges of human trafficking. The chain is accused of employing cleaning staff brought into Belgium without the necessary papers. The practice is common across the country, the social inspection services allege. The case will be the first of its kind in Belgium.

Rail authority NMBS is looking at ways to improve its mobile internet signal on some trains, according to federal mobility minister Jacqueline Galant. At present, ordinary signals are poorly received because of the trains’ construction and because railway lines are often remote from mobile internet masts.

Two possibilities are being studied: the installation of repeaters on rolling stock, which boost the signal, and the provision of NMBS wi-fi. The two technologies will be tested before a decision is made, Galant said.

The Antwerp non-profit Moeders voor Moeders has announced that it received a foundling, delivered to the special hatch it maintains in the Borgerhout district of the city, in December. The hatch allows a baby to be abandoned safely. Jules, the latest arrival, is the seventh baby to be left in the hatch since it became available in 2000. A family member has six months to reclaim a baby left in the hatch – something that has only happened in one case to date.

The campaign to save the name of Cara Pils (Offside, last week) has been won, with Colruyt, the supermarket chain that markets the beer, deciding to cancel a proposed name-change to Everyday. A spokesperson for the company said they were “surprised at the concerns” of the public and “moved by so much love”. A petition to save

the name was signed by more than 3,000 people. “We’re keeping our old name,” the company said. “Cara Pils remains Cara Pils – promise!”

The EU Commission has given Liberty Global, owners of Telenet, permission to proceed with plans to take a controlling interest in De Vijver, the company that owns TV channels Vier and Vijf. The EU said it had received assurances that the stations will not restrict their channels when being distributed by companies other than Telenet.

Flemish sports minister Philippe Muyters has proposed a new name for the regional sports administration Bloso.

Sport Vlaanderen, he said, would more readily identify the organisation and sounds more Flemish. The original name is an acronym of the agency that promotes physical development and sport.

Staff at supermarket chain Delhaize have given their backing to an agreement reached two weeks ago on the company’s restructuring plan. The amended plan sees a reduced number of job losses, voluntary redundancies and bridging pensions from the age of 55. It also reduces the number of store closures.

The flight of more and more families from Brussels to the municipalities in the Vlaamse rand, or periphery around Brussels, is increasing the level of wealth in the province of Flemish Brabant, according to the province’s social planning office.

Some 30,000 people made the move between 2008 and 2012, mainly young educated couples, an increasing number of whom are of foreign origin.

OFFSIDE What becomes of the broken-hearted

© Milou Verstappen 2015/CHIPS StampMedia

Nozizwe Dube The new chair of the Flemish Youth Council is 19-year-old Nozizwe Dube, who takes over from Lander Piccart, who has already moved on to work in the cabinet of Brussels minister Pascal Smet.

Dube is in the final year of her studies in science and mathematics as she begins a three-year term heading the Jeugdraad, or Youth Council, a body routinely consulted by the government of Flanders on matters of policy that affect young people. The council also issues its own policy statements on applicable issues.

Dube arrived in Flanders from Zimbabwe six years ago, so her progress is particularly remarkable. However, she told Stamp Media that she’s fed up with all that concentration on her life story. “I hope we’ll soon be able to focus more on content,” she

said.

She originally joined the Youth Council to make friends and to practise speaking Dutch. When a place opened up on the general assembly, she stood and was elected.

Her platform running for chair was employment and the pressure young people are put under to select their studies according to the demands of the labour market. She also intends to fight increases in public transport costs, which hit young people hard, she said, and to help break down the taboos surrounding psychological well-being, depression and suicide.

“If we look at the suicide figures among young people in this country, I think we have more than enough to talk about,” she told Stamp Media. \ Alan Hope

www.refugeesinrhyl.wordpress.com

Municipal authorities in the seaside town of Rhyl in North Wales last week unveiled a memorial to a Flemish man who died of a broken heart.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, thousands of Belgians began making their way across the Channel to safety in England. Among them was Franciscus De Roover of Aarschot, Flemish Brabant. With his four children and grandchildren, he ended up in Rhyl.

Franciscus’ beloved wife, Theresia, had died shortly before the family fled. It was soon to take its toll: he died at the age of 64 in February 1915 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Those he left behind believe the sorrow at the

© Rhyl Tourist Information Centre

death of his wife and the loss of his homeland sent him to his grave.

It must have seemed to those refugees that they might never return, especially as news of the horrors of the war filtered back to them. During the four-year duration, about a quarter of a million Belgians went to the UK. In some

places, where they were present in large numbers, the locals eventually began to resent their presence.

That doesn’t seem to have been the case for the small seaside town of Rhyl. According to newspaper reports at the time, the townspeople turned out in droves to greet the Belgian refugees. Councillor F Phillips, welcoming them on behalf of the council, was too choked up to make a speech, the Rhyl Journal reports, and confined his remarks to calling for three cheers.

Last week’s ceremony to unveil the monument (pictured) included the town clerk, members of the county council and other notables, including descendants of Franciscus who travelled to Rhyl from Belgium. \ AH

Flanders Today, a weekly English-language newspaper, is an initiative of the Flemish Region and is financially supported by the Flemish authorities.

The logo and the name Flanders Today belong to the Flemish Region (Benelux Beeldmerk nr 815.088). The editorial team of Flanders Today has full editorial autonomy regarding the content of the newspaper and is responsible for all content, as stipulated in the agreement between Corelio Publishing and the Flemish authorities.

Editor Lisa Bradshaw DEPUTY Editor Sally Tipper CONTRIBUTING Editor Alan Hope sub Editor Linda A Thompson Agenda Robyn Boyle, Georgio Valentino Art director Paul Van Dooren Prepress Corelio AdPro Contributors Daan Bauwens, Rebecca Benoot, Derek Blyth, Leo Cendrowicz, Katy Desmond, Andy Furniere, Diana Goodwin, Julie Kavanagh, Catherine Kosters, Toon Lambrechts, Katrien Lindemans, Ian Mundell, Anja Otte, Tom Peeters, Daniel Shamaun, Senne Starckx, Christophe Verbiest, Débora Votquenne, Denzil Walton General manager Hans De Loore Publisher Corelio Publishing NV

Editorial address Gossetlaan 30 - 1702 Groot-Bijgaarden tel 02 373 99 09 editorial@flanderstoday.eu subscriptions tel 03 560 17 49 subscriptions@flanderstoday.eu or order online at www.flanderstoday.eu Advertising 02 373 83 57 advertising@flanderstoday.eu Verantwoordelijke uitgever Hans De Loore

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\ POLITICS

5TH COLUMN No punching bag

The problems between CD&V and N-VA reached the boiling point last week, to the point where employers and entrepreneurs, the biggest supporters of both the federal and Flemish government coalitions, felt prompted to ask the parties to simmer down.

Readers of this column are aware of the frustrating position CD&V is in, having been reduced to a medium-size party and being the only centrists in a largely rightwing government. However, Kris Peeters, at the centre of multiple controversies, does not believe his party’s positions are the source of the arguments. Rather, he believes N-VA is targeting him personally for criticism.

“This game playing has to stop”, he told business daily De Tijd on Friday. N-VA is singling him out, he said, because he is so successful at his job. Skipping the index and several agreements between unions and employers, all of them Peeters’ responsibilities as minister for work, have proven successful – unlike some of N-VA’s projects.

All talk and no show is how CD&V views N-VA. Off the record, they point out the poor performances of minister for the interior Jan Jambon, defence minister Steven Vandeputte and finance minister Johan Van Overtvelt. In the eyes of the Christian-democrats, seasoned governors themselves, they are amateurs.

To top that, they ridicule the extensive security measures for N-VA leader and Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever. “Does he fancy himself Obama?”

True enough, N-VA is having some trouble adjusting to its new position as dominant party. The party is made for opposition, being particularly good at pointing out what goes wrong and finding it much harder to stomach inevitable compromises. Crying out in the public forum comes more naturally to the nationalists than the corridors of power’s discretion.

N-VA also lacks the generosity required of the largest party in a coalition. If the other partners feel they are getting crushed the whole time, there is little reason for them to keep the coalition going. It is thus a tradition in Belgian politics that the smaller partners are allowed to “score” every now then, at the expense of the leader.

So far, Peeters has received little in the way of N-VA generosity. He is therefore determined to fight back. “I do not know what N-VA is trying to achieve in silencing me,” he said. “The more they tackle me, the more determined I become.” \ Anja Otte

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Gatz for community service Flanders’ youth minister supports call to reinstate programme Derek Blyth More articles by Derek \ flanderstoday.eu

F

landers’ minister for youth issues, Sven Gatz, says he supports the idea of reinstating a programme of community service for young people. Gatz was responding to a request from a group of wellknown Belgian figures, including scientists, politicians and cultural figures. Among them were Ghent theatre director and actor Wim Opbrouck, professor Eric Corijn of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and VRT meteorologist Frank Deboosere.

The group called on the government to introduce a new form of community service that would allow young people between the ages of 18 and 25 to receive a sixmonth placement in the social or non-profit sector. In return, they would receive a small allowance and insurance cover.

The call to action was launched

© Courtesy Leidscherijn Festival

by the organisation Platform for Citizen Service, which represents some 150 volunteer and community organisations. It has been campaigning for several years for the federal government to bring back community service, which

Watchdog uncovers discrimination in service cheques sector Flanders’ employment minister, Philippe Muyters, has been called on to clamp down on widespread discrimination against foreigners in the service cheques sector.

According to research conducted by the Flemish Minority Forum, many companies in the sector follow clients’ requests to not send foreign-born workers.

The Forum made anonymous phone calls that showed that 67% of service cheques agencies will not send a foreign worker if they are asked not to.

Service cheques, or dienstencheques in Dutch, were introduced by the federal government to make it easier to employ domestic workers for tasks such as cleaning and ironing. The cheques, which are heavily subsidised by the government, will become the

responsibility of regional governments on 1 April.

“The system was set up to provide jobs and give people the chance to earn some money,” said Wouter Van Bellingen of the Forum in an interview with VRT. “It now turns out that it has the opposite effect.

This means that the government is in effect subsidising discrimination.”

Jozef De Witte, director of the Interfederal Equal Opportunities Centre, called on the government of Flanders to crack down on discrimination in the sector.

“It’s up to the Flemish government to ensure that the law is obeyed,” he said.

Muyters said he condemned discrimination but rejected a request to introduce anonymous calls to monitor companies. \ DB

was discontinued in the 1990s.

Community service, the organisation said in a statement, “boosts self-confidence, makes young people feel useful, enables them to engage in projects that benefit society and helps them find a job

at a later stage”.

“Once there is a legal framework,” said Gatz, “it will be easier for young people to get involved and for organisations to persuade young people that it is a good idea”.

The goal is to encourage young people to connect with others from different backgrounds, noted Corijn. “It can be a way for people to do something for other people who don’t belong to their own group,” he said. “That way you encourage young people to become active citizens in a society.”

Belgium used to have a system of community service for anyone who refused to do military service.

“My community service made me who I am today,” said Deboosere.

“You gain an incredible amount of experience that you remember for the rest of your life.”

Government announces measures to support construction industry Federal economy minister Kris Peeters has told the construction industry he is working on a “range of measures” to reduce the high number of bankruptcies in the sector. Speaking at the Batibouw building fair in Brussels, he said he was concerned at the high level of financial problems among construction companies, particularly small businesses.

Peeters said that the number of companies going bust had almost doubled over the past decade, with more than 2,000 companies closing in 2014 compared to just over 1,000 in 2005. He wants to support the sector, he said, by reducing high labour costs and cutting benefit fraud.

Peeters also wants to introduce compulsory insurance coverage, he said, so that construction companies are not forced into bankruptcy by costly legal actions. In addition, foreign construction companies will have to adhere to the same rules as Belgian operations.

“The building sector is one of the economic powerhouses of our country,” Peeters said. “It comprises 115,000 companies employing 200,000 workers. One in 10 companies in Belgium is involved in the construction sector. This is a branch of the economy that we have to protect.” \ DB

City scraps car park under Brussels’ historic flea market The opponents of a new underground car park under the historic Vossenplein in Brussels are throwing a party from 14 to 21 March to celebrate the decision by Brussels City council to abandon the project. The party coincides with the 142nd anniversary of the flea market which takes place daily on the square in the Marollen area of the capital (pictured).

Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur held a press conference in the local police station to announce the decision, taken after the massive mobilisation of people opposed to the plan.

“We were always convinced that the car park under the square was undesirable and that a solution had to be found,” said Anne-Marie Appelmans, chair of the Marollen action committee invited by Mayeur to take part in the press conference. “We sat down with the mayor to look for a constructive solution that would

© Gonzalez Fuentes Oscar/Demotix/Corbis

be acceptable to traders, residents and market visitors.”

Els Ampe, alderwoman for mobility and public works, explained the “possible alternatives” that could now be implemented. One involves a new car park less than 500 metres from Vossenplein, near the Kapellekerk train station. In addition, a perimeter would be introduced around the

Vossenplein to ban parking for vehicles larger than two tonnes; parking would be provided for the square’s traders on Waterloolaan.

“We want to give the available parking spaces back to the local residents and tourists,” explained commissioner Johan Dewachter of the Brussels police.

The Vossenplein car park was one of four planned by the council; the others at Yserplein, Rouppeplein and Nieuwe Graanmarkt will go ahead, though opposition party Groen plans to try to put a stop to them, too.

“Finally the city authorities are stepping down from their ivory towers,” said council member Bart D’Hondt. He pointed out the 23,000 signatures gathered on the Vossenplein petition in a matter of days and a massive presence at council meetings. “Don’t go head to head with the people again,” he said. \ Alan Hope

\ COVER STORY

march 4, 2015

The Rundskop effect

Two decades of groundwork is finally paying off for Flemish actors continued from page 1

those mean blending more internationally.

If there is indeed such a thing as “the Rundskop effect”, De Vries says it’s probably in the sense that it helped the industry to realise that anything is possible – if you put in the work. “I think actors have become less naive in this respect,” she says. “They know now that if you want to make it, you’ll have to work very hard at it. For many, making it abroad has always been a dream. Today, it has become a plan, a specific project that requires investment and commitment.”

That’s an opinion echoed by Michaël Pas, a Flemish TV and theatre actor best known for his roles in hit series like the 1990s Kulderzipken and, more recently, Code 37. In 2013, the infamous Danish director Lars Von Trier cast him in his Nymphomaniac epic (as the oldest version of the boyfriend Jerome), and he recently wrapped up shooting for Emperor, a Belgian-Czech co-production by New Zealand director Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Die Another Day).

Emperor was born in Ghent, the film was partially shot in the city. Several other Flemish actors feature in the film, including Marie Vinck (Smoorverliefd) and Sam Louwyck (Rundskop).

Louwyck, by the way, stars in the Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s Le meraviglie (The Wonders), which won the Jury Prize last year at Cannes. In local cinemas now, the film sees Louwyck as the quirky father in a honey-making family in rural Tuscany. Louwyck had to speak Italian for the role. He’s also shot a few films in French and one in Spanish that are all waiting for release dates.

For his part, Pas is currently rehearsing a French-language play in Paris. “Switching languages is not easy, so my technique is to make my lines my own by literally rehearsing them all the time – in the shower, in my car… Not having to focus on the language creates more space to concentrate on the part, with my interpretation and not the version the language coach gives me.”

He describes it as building a kind

The secret of the international success of the Flemish film actor is to be found in theatre “It is fascinating to be part of such an international production,” he tells me. For Pas, the diversity of the crew was especially enriching. “On an international set, you work with people from different cultures, with different styles; you learn so much from that.”

Emperor is a biopic of Charles V, with Adrian Brody playing Charles.

As the 16th-century Holy Roman

of muscular memory. “It’s like a choreography – once you get a handle on the system, you can focus on the part.”

Pas, who is also the vice-president of the Flanders Actors’ Guild, says the newfound success of Flemish actors abroad didn’t come overnight. “We have been building that up for some time now, and it’s paying off,” he says. He thinks that

© Courtesy Fox/Searchlight

Matthias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan in Far from the Madding Crowd. On the cover is Sam Louwyck (left) in Italian film The Wonders and Schoenaerts as a German soldier in Suite français

the theatre background of many local actors lies behind their strong acting talents in other mediums.

“We have a limited amount of film in Flanders, so many actors turn to theatre,” he says. “That can be very valuable for their skills. In film, there is a lot of typecasting. In theatre, you have to be flexible as an actor.”

Explaining that in theatre, actors tend to jump from playing, say, a tormented young man to the king of the castle, he says: “Maybe this is what sets us apart from others internationally. Yes, maybe the secret of the international success of the Flemish film actor is to be found in theatre.”

Born in Antwerp in 1977, Matthias Schoenaerts is the youngest son of the late Julien Schoenaerts, a highly respected theatre actor. So it wasn’t really a surprise that Schoe-

naerts showed a clear interest in acting at a young age.

Rundskop wasn’t even Schoenaerts’ first Oscar-nominated film.

He was 15 when he landed a part in Stijn Coninx’s 1992 Academy Award nominee Daens. Based on the classic novel by Flemish author Louis Paul Boon, it tells the story of a 19th-century priest who fights for the rights of factory workers facing atrocious working conditions.

Over the next few years, Schoenaerts starred in multiple theatre productions and in short films, but his role in the 2002 film Meisje by director Dorothée Van Den Berghe was his breakout performance.

And with his role in Tom Barman’s Any Way the Wind Blows (2003), he proved was Flanders’ young actor to watch.

In 2006, Schoenaerts travelled to the Netherlands for a role in Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek, the Dutch director best known for his erotic thriller Basic Instinct. Things moved quickly after that. In 2008,

Schoenaerts starred in the Flemish horror film Linkeroever, and Erik Van Looy cast him in Loft that same year, a film that would go on to become the most successful in Flemish film history.

Schoenaerts reprised his role in Loft for the American remake, also directed by Van Looy and released in cinemas last year.

Thanks to Roskam, the Antwerp actor starred next to James Gandolfini in Roskam’s first American production, The Drop. And in May, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From the Madding Crowd will be released. In this adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, Schoenaerts plays a shepherd who falls for a landowner, played by Carey Mulligan.

But even before that, you can see Schoenaerts in another Englishlanguage film: In Suite française, he plays opposite Michelle Williams as a German soldier stationed in France during the Second World War.

Films to watch out for Le meraviglie (The Wonders): Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s second film stars Flemish actor Sam Louwyck (Rundskop, The Fifth Season) as Wolfgang, a complex mix of anarchist and dictator, his tirades against the world – and local hunters – largely ignored by his wife and four daughters in rural Tuscany. The film has gotten excellent reviews and won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2014. In cinemas now Suite française: Saul Dibb (The Duchess) directs Matthias Schoe-

naerts in this British film set in Second World War France. Schoenaerts plays a German officer who falls in love with a local villager, played by Michelle Williams. Opens in cinemas on 18 March

Far From the Madding Crowd:

Flemish actor Michael Pas appeared in Nymphomaniac and will be in Lee Tamahori’s Emperor

Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt) directs this new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s famous novel about one rich woman (Carey Mulligan) and three suitors.

Matthias Schoenaerts plays one of them: the destitute shepherd Gabriel Oak. Opens in cinemas on 29 April

\5

\ BUSINESS

week in business Air VLM The Antwerp-based carrier will launch daily services connecting Liège Airport with Nice and Avignon in France and Venice and Bologna in Italy in May. The airline is already operating routes connecting Antwerp to Hamburg and Geneva.

Airports Brussels The Gulf states carrier Emirates is in talks to seek solutions allowing the Airbus A380, the world’s largest aircraft, to land at Brussels Airport. Taxiways and boarding gates would need to be adapted to meet requirements.

Chemicals Solvay The Brussels-based plastics and chemicals group is investing $85 million (€76 million) in a specialty polymers resin production unit in Augusta, Georgia. The new plant, to come on stream in 2016, will allow the company to boost capacity of polyether ethercetone (Peek) in high demand worldwide.

Environmental De Meuter The Ternat-based building group, with expertise in demolition, decontamination and renovation of brownfield sites, is partnering with two Liège companies to bid for the €1 billion contract to clean up the heavily polluted sites of steel maker Arcelor in the Liège area. Included are two closed blast furnaces, steel mills, coke ovens and 307 hectares of land.

Insurance Ethias The ailing insurer, rescued with public funds in 2008, hopes to close its lossmaking First life insurance programme. The First account guarantees some 50,000 policyholders an average interest rate of 3.44%.

The firm has set aside €450 million to buy out outstanding contracts and hopes to be allowed to create a “bad insurance” fund to park its unprofitable activities. Policyholders would get a onetime-only four years of interest in exchange for agreeing to new contracts at current market rates.

Media Telenet The Mechelen-based cable and telecommunications group has been given the green light by EU competition authorities to acquire a stake in the Vier and Vijf TV channels.

\6

Brussels Airport cheaper Study shows that Zaventem offers a good deal to airlines Alan Hope More articles by Alan \ flanderstoday.eu

T

he use of facilities for airlines at Brussels Airport is cheaper than at its foreign competitors, according to a study commissioned by the Dutch government into the competitive position of Schiphol. The study looked at 11 major airports, including London Gatwick, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Madrid, and concluded that London’s Heathrow is the most expensive.

The researchers looked at the costs in charges and taxes for a group of airlines that accounted for 97% of Schiphol traffic in 2013. The cost of doing business at most airports rose markedly between 2003 and 2014, though Brussels was an exception, and its position relative to other major hubs improved as a result.

In 2003, for example, both Madrid and Gatwick were cheaper than Brussels. That is no longer the

© Courtesy Ad Meskens/Wikimedia

case – only Istanbul and Dubai are now cheaper.

In related news, the Inter-regional Office for the Environment (Ircel) has criticised claims by the activist group Au Coeur de l’Europe claiming that Brussels Airport is the main polluter in the region.

The group released a report claiming that Brus-

sels Airport not only had the greatest impact on the population of all airports in Europe – with 120,000 people affected by each take-off – but was also the number one source of pollution in Brussels and Flemish Brabant.

“Road traffic is and remains the biggest source of air pollution in Brussels, followed by heating in buildings,” Frans Fierens, a specialist with Ircel, told Brusselnieuws.be. “The increase in air traffic has a serious and increasing influence on climate change, and it makes little difference whether the greenhouse gases are emitted at ground level or at altitude. However, for substances responsible for air pollution, the story is different. Emissions at altitude have less of an effect on air quality on the ground than emissions at ground level, where people live and breathe,” he said.

PrediCube to make online advertising more effective

Construction industry hard hit by non-payment

Antwerp University (UA) spin-off PrediCube and Flanders’ digital centre iMinds have collaborated on a project that makes personalised advertising three times as precise as traditional website analysis. In a statement, PrediCube expressed its ambition to offer advertisers and media enterprises a European alternative to Google and Facebook, with more privacy guarantees.

About 70% of the €27 billion spent each year in Europe on digital marketing goes directly to a few multinationals, according to the researchers behind PrediCube. To stop this drain of money and valuable consumer data, they invented an algorithm that better predicts people’s online interests.

“On the basis of cookies from the previous 30 days, we can predict viewers’ interests,” said PrediCube co-founder David Martens. “We connect a visit to a client’s website with the combined surfing behaviour of a few content-rich websites, especially of media enterprises.”

Their approach seems to work better than the traditional approach in which only websites are taken into account, with click-through rates up by 300%. “We are now capable of matching adverts with the right client profiles three times more effectively,” said Philippe Degueldre of marketing bureau Pebble Media, which is responsible for the online adverts of public broadcaster VRT and telecommunications company Telenet.

PrediCube works according to the privacy-by-design principle. That means that websites have to receive explicit permission from visitors to use cookies, otherwise no tracking is done. Data is not kept longer than 30 days.

PrediCube currently has eight clients, including motoring organisation Touring and the annual housing fair Batibouw. \ Andy Furniere

Flanders’ construction industry has called on the government to introduce legislation to address late payments or non-payments of invoices. A survey by the industry federation Bouwunie revealed that six out of 10 businesses have problems caused by clients who don’t pay on time.

In only one of those six cases is there a legitimate dispute over the invoice, Bouwunie said. In half of all cases, no reason is given for late payment. Businesses reported outof-pocket losses of €12,000 on average when the survey was taken, which, together with low profit margins, has left many of them teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

The federation is asking the government for protective measures, including a legal obligation to pay a deposit on any contract worth more than €1,000. Other measures could include the blocking of the whole sum in the case of works ordered by public authorities, a payment guarantee for major works ordered by individuals and a condition attached to new mortgages that payment obligations to builders will be respected.

The federation also asked for a new rule that would allow a contractor to seize any property for which payments remain outstanding. \ AH

More compensation for businesses hurt by road works Flanders’ economy minister, Philippe Muyters, has promised to improve compensation for businesses affected by major road works. At present, small firms and shops can claim €76 a day compensation if public works force them to close for at least eight consecutive days.

Muyters plans new rules in 2016 to provide compensation even if a business remains open, as long as it suffers disruption. In addition, he said that the claims procedure will be automated.

The union NSZ, which represents the self-employed, welcomed the announcement.

“Too many self-employed people are forced out of business by road works,” said director Christine Mattheeuws. \ Derek Blyth

Controversy over Uplace mobility report A mobility study on Uplace, the leisure and shopping complex planned for Machelen, just off the Brussels Ring, was prepared by a study bureau that had previously worked with Uplace, VRT reported.

Antea Group appeared on the Uplace website list of partners, VRT reported, until the story broke on the radio. Antea told the broadcaster that there was no question of conflict of interest.

Uplace stressed that the bureau is independent.

“Antea Group carried out an environmental impact study for the Uplace project in 2010,” Uplace said in a statement. “Antea Group is one of the few independent environmental impact expert bureaux in Flanders to be recognised by the government. The bureau works for all levels of government, for organisations and for

© Courtesy Uplace

companies.”

The mobility problems associated with the arrival of a huge shopping complex next to the Brussels Ring (pictured) have long been among the main criticisms of the project, with claims that an already saturated motorway will come to a standstill.

Antea Group’s report concluded that a scaleddown version of Uplace, approved two weeks ago by the government of Flanders, would require only a new bus connection and a regional rail station. The planned tram link between Vilvoorde and Zaventem, which would also serve Uplace, was not even strictly necessary, the report said. And the feared traffic congestion would not materialise.

The conclusion was described as “incredible”

by Dirk Lauwers, a lecturer in mobility at Ghent University. “This is the umpteenth study, and the credibility of the figures is sinking lower,” he told VRT radio. The arrival of the complex, he said, would drive the saturation of the Vilvoorde viaduct up to 150% and that of the Woluwelaan to 200%. \ AH

\ INNOVATION

march 4, 2015

Leaving fear behind

week in innovation

New scanners transform the MRI experience in some Flemish hospitals Senne Starckx More articles by Senne \ flanderstoday.eu

W

hen doctors make a diagnosis, they can rely on an array of hightech scanners that turn their patients’ bodies virtually inside out. It’s impossible to imagin e a modern-day hospital without medical imaging equipment.

MRI scans can be frightening, especially for very young and elderly patients MRI – magnetic resonance imaging – is one of the commonly used techniques in the radiology department. Instead of using ionising radiation, as a CT scanner does and which can only be used in limited doses, an MRI uses magnetism to penetrate the body. With the help of an injected contrast fluid, a radiologist uses this scanner to light up particular parts of the internal physiology.

© Courtesy Philips Health Care

The new patient-friendly MRI scanner can be found in Knokke and a few other hospitals across Flanders

The appearance of an MRI scanner is well known. The patient lies on a movable table that slides into a narrow cylindrical tunnel, and, once in place, they must lie very still for almost an hour.

For many patients, this is a frightening experience. The enclosed space and the strange noises produced by the scanner can make for a very uncomfortable experience. So they start to wiggle, which destroys the quality of the images. Frequently, the entire process has to start all over.

So why not transform the time that a patient spends inside a scanner

into a relaxing experience? That’s just what Philips, a world leader in medical imaging technology, has done. For its “ambient experience” programme, the multinational with Dutch roots has developed a new generation of patient-friendly scanners.

Philips’ solution consists of pleasant, relaxing images shown to the patient from the moment they enter the scanner’s tunnel until the end of the procedure.

“Patients can listen to music or other sounds through headphones,” explains Jo Bostyn, business manager at Philips Belux.

“Thanks to the images and sounds, they are relaxed and lie still throughout the entire scanning procedure.”

To date, Philips has installed 750 of these MRI scanners in hospitals around the world, at a cost of €2.6 million each. The AZ Gezondheidszorg Oostkust in Knokke, on the coast, is one of the few in Flanders that uses the technology.

“It’s common knowledge that an MRI scan can be frightening,” says Francis Vanneste, head of the radiology department in Knokke.

“Especially for very young and elderly patients.”

In Vanneste’s department, the patient can choose from 10 light and sound themes by tapping on a screen. The desired theme is then created by a projection of animated slides. “Because of the specially designed LED lighting, they don’t experience the tunnel effect,” says Vanneste.

A big advantage of the new scanner is that children don’t need to be given tranquillisers to get them through the procedure. Vanneste: “In our previous scanner this was necessary for more than onethird of our young patients. Afterwards, they needed more than six hours to recover from the pills.”

People with special needs help architects to see space differently

WWW.ARCHITECTUUR.KULEUVEN.BE/AIDA

In a recent survey among Flemish architects, accessibility legislation made the top 10 list of the most irritating aspects of their profession. After all, the goal of the requirements is to allow people with a physical or mental disability to be able to easily access buildings, not to stimulate the designer’s creativity.

Many architects feel that these norms restrict their professional freedom. The requirements, they say, don’t leave room for an architect to come up with more creative or individualised solutions.

But accessibility doesn’t need to clash with the designer’s itch for freedom, says Ann Heylighen, a professor in architecture at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).

Heylighen (pictured) recently finished the Aida project (Architectural design In Dialogue with dis-Ability), in which the average architect’s practices were turned upside down.

“The aim of the project was to trigger rather than restrict creativity, by acknowledging the potentials of disability,” says Heylighen.

“Through their particular interac-

© Rob Stevens/KULeuven

tion with the built environment, disabled people develop the ability to identify spatial qualities that architects may not be aware of.

They expand the way architects understand and design space.”

To explain that added value – for disabled and non-disabled people – Heylighen offers a useful metaphor. “A sommelier in a restaurant can identify multiple types of bitterness in a single glass. Many of these types remain unnoticed for

the average wine drinker, but they all nevertheless contribute to the taste of the wine. Similarly, disabled people may draw the architect’s attention to spatial qualities that we all sense but can never pinpoint.”

So far, Heylighen’s approach has been used in several renovation jobs in buildings on the KU Leuven campus. Inside the large auditorium in the Maria Theresia College, the acoustics were improved based on an analysis made with the help of disabled students.

“This analysis directly informed major alterations to improve the acoustic accessibility of the auditorium,” says Heylighen. “That’s crucial for students with a hearing or visual impairment, but also for students of the ‘University of the Third Age’ and non-native listeners.”

Aida focused on disability in the broadest sense. “People with sensory impairment such as poor vision or blindness can teach architects a lot about the role of nonvisual sensory qualities in the built environment,” explains Heylighen.

“People with an autism spectrum

disorder may be highly sensitive to the logic and legibility of a building. And from people with dementia, architects can learn how the built environment offers us landmarks in orientating ourselves.”

The team behind the project was supported by the European Research Council (ERC), which awarded a prestigious starting grant to Heylighen covering the period 2007-2013. Recently, the professor also received a Proofof-Concept Grant from the ERC, which is given to assist in the commercialisation of academic research.

In a follow-up project called Renta-Spatialist, Heylighen’s team now wants to export its method used to analyse KU Leuven buildings beyond the university campus.

“We want to set up a consultancy service that enables disabled people to ‘rent out’ their disability experience to architects,” explains Heylighen. “Our goal is twofold: to contribute to a more inclusive built environment and to strengthen disabled people’s position on the labour market by helping them to gain work experience.” \ SS

Flanders launches prison health study The government of Flanders has launched a study to assess the general health of prisoners in the region. The results will be used to implement more effective health projects for prisoners. Setting up health projects for prisoners is difficult, said Dana Mariën, policy co-ordinator at the prison in Beveren.

“There are many non-Dutchspeakers, underprivileged people and different levels of education,” she said. “Prisoners have little control over their diet and exercise little, so they often gain weight.

The stress also worsens their smoking habit. All these aspects have to be taken into consideration in the development of a health policy.”

Children gaming for 40 minutes a day Flemish children aged between three and 10 spend an average of 40 minutes a day on computer games.

The time increases with age, from 21 minutes a day for the youngest to 74 minutes for the eldest. The survey was carried out by Ghentbased digital research centre iMinds among more than 9,800 parents. According to the study, most parents feel that gaming is useful and has educational aspects. Parents who had wholly negative views of gaming were more inclined to strictly monitor their children, which had negative effects. Those with a more nuanced view were better able to guide their children.

Software offers ultrafast debugging Researchers from the universities of Antwerp (UA) and Brussels (VUB) have developed a toolkit that prevents bugs appearing during update cycles by Amazon and Facebook. Every piece of software in the update process needs to be tested thoroughly to detect possible errors, which often requires a lot of power and is time-consuming. UA and VUB research groups have come up with a solution: Instead of debugging the entire software package over and over, they focus on the differences between two versions. “These differences are very small,” said Serge Demeyer, a computer scientist at UA. “We can run very complex software analyses in a relatively short time.

The result is better software, a higher degree of functionality and fewer errors.”

\7

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\ EDUCATION

march 4, 2015

Professor for a day

week in education

Antwerp University opens labs and auditoriums to different kind of crowd Débora Votquenne More articles by Débora \ flanderstoday.eu

WWW.TINYURL.COM/KINDERUNIVERSITEIT

D

o you have one of those kids that just won’t stop asking maddening “but why” questions? Have they ever surprised you by prying open your computer to see what was inside?

Do you sometimes feel like they are just smarter than you?

Then it might be a good idea to take them to the 11th annual Kinderuniversiteit (Children’s University) on 8 March. Antwerp University (UA) has set up a comprehensive programme that hopes to both entertain and inform (preferably both) children between the ages of eight and 14.

The idea of letting young children soak up the atmosphere of academic life at a university and encouraging them to discover what they’re really interested in is something with which Flanders has experimented for some time now. Multiple academic institutions across the country organise children’s universities once or twice a year, where primary school students can participate in workshops, demonstrations and real lab experiments. They can also sign up for proper lectures, offered in one of the university’s actual auditoriums.

For its own Children’s University, UA partnered with Technopolis, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and the Royal Antwerp Micrographical Society to stimulate interest in STEM studies (science, technology, engineering and maths) among the students of tomorrow.

These efforts extend to all possible disciplines. Take the negotiation classes, for example, in which children get to rule Europe for the day. Under the guidance of professors from the university’s social and political sciences department, kids will negotiate the accession of Turkey to the EU.

More foreign researchers are coming to Flemish universities, according to daily newspaper De Tijd. Science faculties in particular are very international, partly due to a shortage of experts on a national level, according to statistics from the universities of Leuven (KU Leuven), Ghent and Antwerp. According to Liliane Schoofs, vicerector of research policy at KU Leuven, two years ago only 30% of PhDs at the university were taken by foreign students. “Now, the majority of the faculties have 40% foreign PhD students,” she said. “In certain faculties, the ratio of foreign to Belgian PhD students is 50-50.”

Pupils should mediate in bullying cases

© Vincent Jauniaux / UA

Flanders’ academic institutions have embraced “children’s universities” as a way to get tomorrow’s students interested in STEM subjects

If your children are more into practical experiments, they could learn how to programme their own video games. And if they love languages, they could always master their first few words of Chinese or learn how to decipher ancient writings.

Stijn Meuris is one of the experts giving a lecture at the Children’s University. And though he’s not actually a professor – he is a musician and journalist – he is fascinated by stars, comets and the like. “This is the second time I’ve been asked to talk about astronomy at the Children’s University in Antwerp, and, I must say, I’m absolutely crazy about it,” he says.

Stijn en de Sterren (Stijn and the Stars), however, isn’t a lecture.

“Let’s call Stijn en de Sterren a performance,” he says. “It’s an – almost – one-man show dealing with the question of how long all of this – the universe and our earth

– will continue to exist.”

Stijn en de Sterren was originally made for adult audiences, but a touch of humour and a lighter tone make it accessible to listeners of all ages, he says. In line with the thinking behind children’s universities, Meuris wanted to step back from the idea that children or young teens are unable to understand a complex subject like ast ronomy.

“It all depends on the way you deliver it,” he says. “I’m fascinated by stars and the universe, and I am convinced that if you talk to teenagers in a way that is committed and passionate, they’ll be able to absorb much more than if you set out to ‘teach them something’.”

Asked what he’s trying to achieve

8 March

Q&A

by taking part in the Children’s University, he laughs. “I like to talk, and I like stars,” he says. “I just think it’s fun.”

Maybe it’s this attitude that has made his performance a favourite with children and their parents. “I talk about stars in the way I wished my teachers had when I was a kid.”

Still, UA doesn’t actually offer any astronomy courses, so why include the subject in the programme?

“Astronomy is so much more than stars,” he says. “It’s about philosophy: Where do we come from and are we here to stay? It’s about physics and mathematics as well, but don’t let that scare you. I was awful at maths when I was at school. But that didn’t stop me from loving science and stars.”

Antwerp University Prinsstraat 13, Antwerp

WWW.TAALENLETTERKUNDE.UGENT.BE

Stef Slembrouch is a linguistics professor at Ghent University and in charge of the new evening lecture series that looks at jazz music through a multidisciplinary lens Why a lecture series on jazz music specifically?

I’m a linguist but also a jazz lover, and I have been for a very long time. I’ve had lots of very interesting conversations over the years with various people on the nature of jazz and on many topics related to that, often with people who have more expertise than I do.

So at one point we came to realise that there is no space at all at the moment in our curriculum in the arts faculty for something you could describe as a scientific and academic approach to the study

Flanders attracts foreign researchers

entire point of jazz is a particular orientation to the material.

of jazz. Finally, I came up with the idea for the programme, together with the curricula manager and one of my colleagues.

What’s on the programme?

We wanted to offer a group of presentations featuring speakers from diverse backgrounds. They will all talk about jazz as a very important music phenomenon, as a kind of practice more so than a theory throughout the 20th century, and of course the current century. We put together a programme that touches on the practical aspects,

the musical aspects, the historical aspects and the connections to the arts that all relate to jazz. The

Do participants who come to these talks need any kind of background in music?

No, and they’re also open to the public. Quite a few people are dedicated to jazz and want to learn more about it; some will be secondary school music teachers looking to do this as a post-qualification additional training. We had 100 people in the room for our first lecture – quite a good start. The lectures are in Dutch, but Christopher Hall will be coming to talk about the London jazz scene on 9 March, and that will be in English.

Flanders’ education minister, Hilde Crevits, wants to promote peer mediation, in which youngsters are trained to mediate in conflicts between fellow students.

The method depends on the right training and support from school staff and principals. Crevits was speaking at a debate on bullying during a meeting of the education committee in the Flemish parliament. The Flemish Education Council presented an advisory report in which it called for a long-term policy on bullying that involves all schools in the region. Crevits admitted that there is a lack of management regarding bullying policies and proposed the foundation of a contact point.

UGent begins “try-outs” for pupils Ghent University is inviting pupils from the final year of secondary school to try out being a university student in April and May. They can choose between maths, sociology and anatomy. The sessions are meant for students who already have an idea about the direction they want to follow and those who are struggling with the decision. In one session, the participants follow a lecture, gain access to course material and take a short exam.

The procedure gets them thinking about how to structure their studies according to university requirements.

The one-day sessions “go a lot further than the open lectures we currently organise,” said UGent study and career coach Isabelle Lanszweert.

\ interview by Vanessa Rombaut

\9

\ LIVING

week in activities Great Begijnhof Tour A guided walk through the larger of Leuven’s two remaining begijnhoven. This residential quarter dating back to the 13th century once housed a community of women and is now a Unesco World Heritage Site. (In Dutch) 7 March, 14.00-16.00; Leuven; €10; reservations required at hello@leuvenleisure.com \ www.leuvenwalks. leuvenleisure.com

Apero National In honour of International Women’s Day, cafés across the country will be offering all women a free Belgian beer. Find a café near you via the website. 7 March, 18:3019:30; across Flanders; free \ www.fieroponsbier.be

Walk in the lock The largest lock in the world is under construction in Antwerp harbour, and it’s almost done. Before it opens (and fills with water), the public has one last chance to step inside and see it up close. 7-8 March; Deurganckdoksluis, Sint-Antoniusweg, Doel (Haven 1721); free \ www.voetenindesluis.be

Bike tour in the Kempen A guided tour through some quiet nature preserves, led by a representative of the Forest Service. Expect to see wild heather and migratory birds. Bring your own bike and wading boots. (In Dutch) 8 March, 9:00-11:30; Dovre, Nijverheidsstraat 18, Ravels; free \www.natuurpuntturnhoutsekempen.be

Abbey duck traps The abbey of Baudelo used to catch ducks in ponds using special traps. A guide will show you the old eendenkooien and explain how they were used, as well as other hidden places around the abbey. Fee includes refreshments. (In Dutch) 8 March, 14:00; Baudelo Abbey, Liniedreef, Sinaai (Sint-Niklaas); €5 \ www.boudelo.be

Scavenger hunt Pick up your comic book with the route at the Kasterlee tourist office, then follow the clues to unravel the mystery of the Hidden Castle. Along the way, meet historic and imaginary figures from the village of Tielen. Fun for the whole family, and a grand prize worth €2,000. Through 7 November; Toerisme Kasterlee, Markt 13; €10 \ www.toerisme-kasterlee.be

\ 10

“My hands and the spool” Leo Van Bouwel is one of a very few goose-riding netmakers Marc Maes More articles by Marc \ flanderstoday.eu

WWW.BLOGGEN.BE/GANZENRIJDEN

V

alentine’s Day marked the kick-off of the 2015 goose-riding season. Organised for the first time in 1898 in the village of Oorderen, goose-riding remains a folklore highlight on the calendars of the polder villages north of Antwerp.

Basically, goose-riding consists of riding a horse at full speed under a suspended goose and tugging at its neck until its head comes off.

The first rider who comes away with the head in his hands is the winner. It’s less gruesome than it sounds: The geese are already dead when they are hung from the goose-riding net.

Sponsors and members of the public donate money to “the gallows”. The several thousands of euros in proceeds pay for the winner’s celebration. The 11 participating villages, including Hoevenen, Berendrecht and Ekeren, hold their own competitions, with the winner, or “king”, inviting his fellow riders to a feast.

The five-week competition concludes with the Keizerrijden (Emperors’ Ride), with kings from the respective villages competing for the ultimate title of Emperor in the home village of the 2014 Emperor. This year that’s Stabroek.

Although goose-riding is a male-dominated activity, there is also a women’s competition in May. The proceeds from the women’s competition go to charity. See the website for remaining goose-riding dates this season.

Each goose must be packed into a solid net.

Leo Van Bouwel is a goose-riding veteran, and the polder’s nettenbreier (net knitter). He is responsible for the nets from which the geese dangle.

Van Bouwel is a member of the Koninklijke Gansrijdersmaatschappij Hoevenen. He joined the association more than half a century ago to become a king back in 1968.

“I have been knitting nets since I was 12 years old; we used to catch birds in the polders,” he remembers. “In 1983, I was asked by our gooseriding association to manufacture the nets to hold the geese. Each association used to have its own netmaker; many have passed away or

© Marc Maes

Leo Van Bouwel knits the goose-riding nets evenings in his living room

stopped, and I was left as sole provider for all 11 goose-riding events.”

According to Van Bouwel, the origin of reinforcing the goose’s neck with a net dates back to the early days of goose-riding. “Goose-riding is folklore and is meant to boost community life, so it should take a few hours,” he says. “The net allows the organisers to stretch the game out. They cut the net away during the gooseriding until, finally, riders pass under the blote nek, the goose’s bare neck. That’s when crowds gather near ‘the gallows’ to witness the winner’s pull.”

Van Bouwel, now 66, is currently teaching a group of six youngsters the finer points of netmaking. “Some of them now manufacture their own nets, like the association in Zandvliet. But most of the associations bring their nets to me.”

As does the Polder Union, goose-riding’s umbrella organisation. The Polder Union tests

all the nets before the Keizerrijden takes place.

Just as artisan netmakers are becoming rare, so are the materials. “Each net requires triplethread bricklayer’s cord of 1.5 millimetres thick.

That has disappeared from the market, and the nylon alternative doesn’t work,” laments Van Bouwel. “We’re constantly on the look-out for it, like in the fishing industry or in specialised shops in the Netherlands. Each cord must withstand a pulling power of 30 to 40 kilograms and the whole net 1,000 kilograms.”

Netmaking is done by hand, and it takes about six hours to knit a net. For Van Bouwel, it’s an evening job; he puts in about 30 minutes every night. “I sit in my chair, and my hands and the spool almost do the work automatically”.

Most of the associations, he explains, use the same net every year, and he repairs them.

“Some of them are more than 20 years old. They bring me the nets, and I replace the part at the front, where the goose’s neck has been.”

BITE The Rapley method Most of us Westerners become a mother without having a clue how we’re going to go about it. When it comes to parenting, we often have only faint memories of our own parents’ methods. I’d hardly even seen another woman breastfeed, for example, let alone heard anyone talk about their toddlers’ eating habits.

Since the birth of my son just over a year ago, my experience has been eye-opening and the learning curve steep. The most interesting discovery I made so far has to do with feeding.

Thanks to a friend who mentioned something about stukjes eten (eating whole pieces), I turned to Google and discovered that she was talking about the Rapley method, also known as baby-led weaning. It has altered my views on nutrition, mothering and even society drastically.

Let’s back up about half a year to the

consultation office of Kind & Gezin, Flanders’ family support service.

I’m diligently taking notes as a nurse explains how to mix pureed potatoes with cooked vegetables (but not too many of the nitraterich ones), not forgetting to add a teaspoon of oil before, I presume, spoon-feeding this to my baby.

It seemed like a lot to remember and, quite honestly, it just didn’t feel right. I went home feeling discouraged and overwhelmed.

A few inquisitive online searches later, I was completely sold on the concept behind the Rapley method, as it is most often referred to in Flanders, after Gill Rapley, a British health visitor and midwife who literally wrote the book on it.

The method is based on the assumption that milk through breastfeeding remains a baby’s main source of sustenance at least until the age of one. The introduction of solid foods is initially just an aside, something

to explore with all the senses and, yes, even play with.

That includes throwing chunks of apple at the dog and smearing whole steamed carrots in their hair… at first. This had me doubting the method in the beginning, but now, several months down the line, I can proudly say that my son (pictured) is eating everything we put in front of him and, most importantly, enjoying it.

“There's been previous research on when to start solids and what babies should eat, but little on how to go about it,” reads a recent article in The Guardian. “Many parents have stuck to spoon-feeding based on the now outdated practice of feeding babies too young to feed themselves.”

According to Rapley, spoon-feeding and pureed food can be skipped entirely in favour of finger foods.

Research has shown that this gradual method leads to less obesity problems among children and helps them to develop a healthy relationship with food.

That’s why in Flanders, as in the rest of the Western world, this baby-led approach is on the rise. There is a lively Facebook group ( facebook. com/groups/rapley) for parents following the Rapley method in Flanders and the Netherlands. It’s worth joining, if only for the cute, sloppy baby photos. \ Robyn Boyle

march 4, 2015

Classifying a continent

An obsessive colonialists’ spirit comes alive in new film N - The Madness of Reason Bjorn Gabriels More articles by Bjorn \ flanderstoday.eu

WWW.NTHEFILM.COM

“W

hose story did I end up in?” asks the wandering spirit of Raymond Borremans in N - The Madness of Reason, the new film by Flemish director and producer Peter Krüger.

Propelled by Walter Hus’ haunting score and the increasingly restless voice-over penned by acclaimed Nigerian writer Ben Okri, N follows the traces of self-made encyclopedist Borremans throughout Western Africa.

“Borremans was a French globetrotter who left Europe in 1929 to explore Africa in the footsteps of the colonials,” Krüger tells me.

“He roamed the continent for half a century, with only one goal: to define and categorise it.”

To grasp reality in its totality, you need fiction Borremans travelled around as a musician and projected films throughout Western Africa, but mainly focused on his encyclopedia of French West Africa, which was left unfinished as he had only reached the letter N when he died.

“I was particularly interested in Borremans’ obsessive spirit and his Western, encyclopedic mind that wanted to capture a continent in 26 letters,” says Krüger. “It’s an impossible project.”

During his research, Krüger came across an anecdote that tied his narrative framework to reality. “Sonia Lazareff, an occultist who calls herself ‘the white sorceress’, accidentally discovered the then-unknown Borre-

The archives of Ivory Coast newspaper Fraternité Matin, featured in N - The Madness of Reason

mans in Ivory Coast. She was impressed by his encyclopedia, a life’s work vegetating in his archive without a chance of being published. She decided to find him a publisher, but when she finally did, Borremans showed no gratitude.”

This really rubbed Lazareff the wrong way.

“She claims that she danced naked on Borremans’ grave after his death in 1988 and cursed his spirit,” says Krüger. “With this anecdote, everything came together: the never-finished encyclopedia and the cursed spirit that will forever roam.”

Although N, which opens on 11 March across Flanders and Brussels, is strongly rooted in facts, Krüger, who explored philosophy, poetry and the history of the Antwerp train station in his magical realist documentary Antwerp Central, didn’t want to construct an anecdotal biography. Borremans’ story offers a gateway to a haunted world filled to the brim with dreams and nightmares, both

real and uncanny. Because, as N argues, the rigorous tendency to classify imported from the West caused all-too-real nightmares.

“As long as you just put plants and animals into categories, there’s no harm done,” says Krüger. “But if you apply this system to people, it becomes dangerous. I’d call both an act of violence. A classification of nature is violent because reality is more fluid and more mysterious than a definition. Applied to people, this means a violence of political power. Whoever doesn’t belong to the right category is likely to be murdered.”

And that’s what happened during the civil wars in Ivory Coast. “After the death in 1993 of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ivory Coast’s first president since its independence in 1960, the so-called Ivorian miracle collapsed,” explains Krüger. “For years, Ivory Coast had adopted the western model of bringing immigrant workers from Burkina Faso and Mali to its plantations, which led

to prosperity and created a growing middle class.”

But Ivoirité’s nationalistic policies, he continues, “led to a struggle between so-called natives and non-natives. In N, the spirit of Borremans ends up in a world where the ideal cherished by him and the generation of the first president has been shattered.”

The political context is key in N, but Krüger didn’t want to make a mere topical documentary. “N is not a film about Africa but about the relationship between Western thinking and Africa,” he explains. “I’ve tried to create a non-Western film about a Westerner. N is like a river, very musical, and adheres more to oral than written traditions.”

Westerners want to preserve the Africa they like, claims Krüger, “like the mosques in Mali that we like to visit as tourists. But Africans want to change, and I want to embrace that movement. Western images of Africa often repeat the same political and economic story, in an ever-recurring style, too. I really wanted to discard that reductive view. If you limit reality to the visible world, you haven’t understood it, especially in Africa. This is one of my special interests as a documentary filmmaker: To grasp reality in its totality, you need fiction.”

In N, an associative film essay eight years in the making, Krüger intertwines the actual and the imaginary, the visible and the invisible. Voices from the past and the present, from Africa and Europe, create an alternative to the single-minded travelogue, the most traditional form of colonial storytelling. Thus encouraging new stories to wander.

N - The Madness of Reason premieres in Flanders on 6 March at Cinema Zuid in Antwerp, followed by a Q&A with narrator Ben Okri and director Peter Krüger

(im)Possible Futures moves the boundaries of imagination Welcome to the United States of Africa, a place found somewhere in the future. Anthropologist Kapwani Kiwanga tells us about the foundation of her glorious nation and how her government sent numerous afronauts to outer space in the year 2100.

Does this sound like a plausible future?

Kiwanga’s Afroglactica is one of the performances that make up the (im)Possible Futures festival, a collaboration between Ghent culture centre Vooruit and Campo arts centre. Over 11 days, more than two dozen local and international artists will show us what our future will – or could – look like.

In 2013, Vooruit hosted a cultural festival on the future called Possible Futures – which sounded a bit more positive. What happened? Are the arts giving into the overwhelming trend of pessimism?

“Not at all,” answers programmer Matthieu Goeury. “Our last future

festival ran at the end of the celebrations of Vooruit’s 100th anniversary. Our predictions were voluntarily naive; we wanted to try everything without limits, everything was possible.”

As soon as that festival was finished, they started thinking about the next one. “We had to be more realistic,” says Goeury.

“Not everything is possible. Reality is complex and even a bit dark. We realised we had to come up with real alternatives to existing problems. That’s the starting point of this festival, making it at once more militant and activist.”

Two of the productions are perfect illustrations of the festival’s scope. The London arts and activist collective Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (or Labofii) will perform We Have Never Been Here Before about the life of British activist and artist John Jordan. “He has transformed his whole life according to his activist principles,” says

FUL and the The Knife take on nationalism and the extreme right in Europa Europa

Goeury. “It shows us how the arts can really change things in this world.”

Labofii also invites local hackers, gamers, designers and artists to join a “hackathon” at which participants will learn how exactly to

hack the 2015 climate summit in Paris. “No climate summit has ever yielded any results,” says Goeury. “It

11-21 March

WWW.IMPOSSIBLEFUTURES.BE

is Labofii’s plan to hack the airports and venues of the summit, locking the negotiators inside until they have reached an agreement. Labofii will organise seven series of hacking workshops around the world, Ghent being their first location.”

Closing event Europa Europa, meanwhile, by the Swedish art collective FUL and the worldfamous electro band The Knife is “an anti-nationalist play based on the rise of the extremist right in Stockholm,” says Goeury. “FUL’s approach is voluntarily simple: We don’t need borders, and there is no such thing as being illegal.”

Any profits earned from Europa, Europa go to a local NGO fighting racism. “We want to make clear we are not just an arts centre presenting themes without commitments to the outside world.” \ Daan Bauwens

Vooruit and Campo, Ghent

\ 11

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Domoxim Real Estate, “The ten mistakes to avoid in property” Berquin Notaries, “The new legislative environment”

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march 4, 2015

A stepping stone

Artists work with prisoners in project that produces art and improves self-esteem Georgio Valentino More articles by Georgio \ flanderstoday.eu

WWW.PAROL-ART.EU

For two years, the European art and advocacy programme Parol! has given prison inmates across the continent an opportunity to nurture their inner artists. They rose to the occasion, and the results are now on show at MuntPunt in Brussels.

T

he modern prison has a chequered past. In the radical 1960s, activist intellectuals like Michel Foucault and Félix Guattari condemned the institution for failing to live up to its promise of justice and rehabilitation. All too often, it doled out disproportionate punishment to those from society’s most vulnerable communities.

And since then, all but the most regressive governments have at least attempted prison reform – with mixed results.

The subject still inflames passions on both sides. The forces of order say law enforcement isn’t a pretty business, but it’s a necessary one.

Prisoners’ rights advocates argue that the Dirty Harry approach is counterproductive. Not only do human-rights infringements betray our fundamental democratic values, they say; they also guarantee recidivism and perpetuate the vicious circle of violence.

The European project Parol! enters the debate through the side door of culture. Artists and inmates at 13 prisons in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Poland and Serbia embarked on a two-year collaboration that has produced a wealth of art and renewed the discussion around rehabilitation.

Although it was realised by an international network of arts and advocacy organisations, led by Flemish amateur writers’ association Creatief Schrijven, Parol! was conceived by one person. Diederik De Beir was already an established haiku poet in his native Ghent

Photographs taken by Parol! participants in the PSC Hoogstraten prison in Antwerp province

about it, but he had to start small.

He lobbied Oudenaarde’s then prison warden, also an artist, to greenlight a cultural programme.

Only after this local success did De Beir envision a similar project on a European scale. In his view, it

Art and creativity in prisons are stepping stones to reintegration into society when he took a post teaching Dutch at the Dendermonde prison in 2010. It was there that he realised the untapped potential of arts education behind bars.

“When I became a teacher in prison, I realised just how disadvantaged and vulnerable inmates are in society,” De Beir tells me. “I was shocked to discover that the government subsidises technical education in prison but not arts instruction.”

De Beir resolved to do something

would still need to progress organically, like the Dendermonde experiment.

“I strongly believe in a bottomup approach,” he says. “In the beginning, I didn’t seek support from any organisations. I wanted to approach artists and prison management directly. I needed the freedom to develop my concept without any obligations.”

Once De Beir fleshed out his plan and found international partners, like Athens’ Amaka and Warsaw’s

Slawek Foundation, the Parol! team made a funding pitch to the European Culture Programme. This wasn’t to be a social programme but a cultural project with a social subtext.

“I wanted to prove to society that inmates stripped of their freedom can have just as much artistic talent as citizens living in freedom,” De Beir says. “I learned from my Ghent experience that artwork produced in this way could be seen as tangible cultural heritage.”

And once prisoners are able to demonstrate their fundamental humanity through culture, the question of crime and punishment can be answered through citizenship rather than zoo keeping.

“At the end of the day, Parol! is all about free citizens embracing their civic responsibility and choosing to meet the incarcerated through art,” De Beir says. “In doing so, they give disadvantaged inmates a chance to develop their creative and social skills as a stepping stone for their reintegration into society. The inmates take up their responsibility for their reintegration by collab-

orating with artists to produce their own work. This responsibility for reintegration is bidirectional and can be seen as an exercise in citizenship and inclusion.”

Parol! officially kicked off in 2013.

Its first phase was a series of intramuros activities. Partner artists entered the prison, led workshops and initiated projects in the literary and visual arts.

It was a revelation for both parties.

The artists discovered the grim reality of life behind bars. The inmates discovered their own expressive potential.

One Flemish inmate told me: “It was my first experience with art; it opened my eyes to a whole new world.” Another added: “Parol! gave me the chance to show that I’m not just a criminal. I’m a person with my own feelings, joy and sadness.”

In keeping with the European theme, Parol! facilitated exchange between participating prisons through an innovative system of

5 March to 4 April

“art boxes”. Each package is a workin-progress, a question waiting to be answered.

“It’s wonderful,” says De Beir. “Artistic work is sent from one prison to another and then returned with creative input. In this way, a network is being created between European prisons, crossing walls and borders.”

By 2014, Parol! was ready to break out beyond the prison gates with a series of exhibitions and conferences throughout the host countries, including Belgium. A library in Dendermonde, East Flanders, for instance, recently wrapped Paper Wins over Stone, a showcase of artwork created behind that city’s prison walls under the tutelage of De Beir and Pietro Tartamella, founder of Italian literary association Cascina Macondo.

Many Dendermonde pieces, along with works from the 12 other participating institutions, are now bound for Brussels’ MuntPunt.

The free exhibition X is the culmination of two years of discovery and exchange. There’s poetry and photography by Flemish inmates, video art by Greek prisoners, an illustrated slang dictionary compiled by Serbian inmates and much, much more.

It’s no coincidence that Parol! makes its last stand in Brussels.

De Beir and co are targeting both the viewing public and European decision-makers, who will eventually have to reckon with the prison problem.

“With X, we hope to raise awareness among the public in general but also among governments and policymakers,” says De Beir.

“Art and creativity in prisons are stepping stones to reintegration into society. I hope that governments will consider subsidising art education with professional artists and art teachers.”

Politics aside, exhibition curator Karel Verhoeven made sure that all works on show could stand on their own artistic merits. Yes, the political message is important, but the goal of Parol! wasn’t to prove that inmates could simply make art; Parol! was founded on the premise that, given the right conditions, inmates could make compelling art.

No debriefing would be complete, of course, without a look toward the future. Included in the monthlong MuntPunt programme is a Forum Day on 6 March in which Parol! partners will brainstorm their next move.

“This could be,” De Beir hopes, “the beginning of a new, sustainable initiative.”

Muntpunt

Muntplein 6, Brussels

\ 13

\ ARTS

week in arts & CULTURE Hotel school launches veggie course

Hotel School Wemmel in Flemish Brabant has launched a new course in vegetarian cooking, which kicked off last week in the presence of star chef and patron of the project, Kobe Desramaults. The new course is the result of two years of preparation by the school, the Ghent non-profit Ethical Vegetarian Alternative (Eva) and the training organisation Syntra. Eva provided a recipe book and training videos. The 100-hour course will form part of the normal syllabus for cooking students.

Artists to get royalties from future sales A new law approved by the federal government will allow artists to take a share of the sale price each time one of their artworks is sold to a new owner. While prices for artworks can be very high, the artist is rarely the main beneficiary, having sold the work for much less to the first owner when they were younger and less well-known. Under the new law, each time a work is sold to a new owner for more than €2,000, the artist will receive a percentage of the sale price, on a sliding scale, from 4% for the first sale to 0.25% of later sales. The rights remain applicable for 70 years after the death of the artist. All new sales will be recorded on a central register.

Youth developing new BELvue Museum The BELvue Museum in Brussels, which recounts the history of Belgium, will close this November and reopen with an entirely new look next year on 21 July, Belgium’s National Day. The museum, located next to the royal palace, has invited a team of 20 people under the age of 25 to develop the new concept.

Because of school visits, 40% of the museum’s patrons are young people, said the museum’s manager, An Lavens. The group, dubbed the BELvue Bende (the BELvue Gang) is brainstorming ideas, visiting other museums and polling visitors to BELvue. The new BELvue will better reflect Belgium’s changing society, said Lavens. “Our country has a young and tumultuous history, and our society is witnessing rapid change,” she said. “We feel it is important that a museum about Belgium also reflects the society in which we live.”

\ 14

Of paramount importance Ozark Henry collaborates with the National Orchestra of Belgium Christophe Verbiest More articles by Christophe \ flanderstoday.eu

WWW.OZARKHENRY.BE

O

n 6 March, Ozark Henry releases Paramount, a collaboration with the National Orchestra of Belgium (NOB). Three years ago, when NOB celebrated their 75th birthday, Ozark Henry accompanied them with a few songs. Both very much enjoyed the collaboration.

“We discovered that my music was highly suited to be played by a symphonic orchestra,” explains Piet Goddaer, the Kortrijk-born musician who was been using the moniker Ozark Henry for 20.

Classical music is not new territory; Goddaer’s father, Norbert Goddaer, was, among other things, a classical composer. “In my youth, classical music was as important as punk and post punk,” says Goddaer.

“I was as impressed by Beethoven and Mahler as by Kraftwerk.” In fact, some of NOB’s members studied with Goddaer’s father.

In 2013, NOB suggested they collaborate again – this time with only Ozark Henry music on the programme. Goddaer eventually decided to write a few new songs and combine them with existing work, both hits and lesser-known album tracks.

It took a year to orchestrate the songs, and Goddaer seized the opportunity to record Paramount.

“It’s the first – and probably the last – time I get to work with an orchestra of 90 musicians. I thought it a bit of a waste to only do a few concerts.”

Goddaer and the orchestra, who premiere Paramount on 5 March in Brussels, had to start nearly

© Veerle Vercauteren

The National Orchestra of Belgium performs music by Ozark Henry this month and again in November

from scratch: The singer did a lot of listening, he says, but didn’t find one recording that he thought contained the right balance between a voice and an orchestra – not drowning out the voice, while still keeping the details of the orchestra’s multitude of instruments and sounds dynamic.

In the end he chose for 9.1 Auro 3D sound. Without getting into all the technical details, the system works with nine loudspeakers. Goddaer stresses that the method is far more expressive than stereo sound.

“In visual arts, we find it normal that technology evolves,” he says.

“The quality is so much better than 10 years ago, it’s almost revolutionary. Audio technology has undergone a similar evolution, but it

hasn’t broken through to a wide audience. The misconception is that it’s much too expensive.”

Well, isn’t it, with nine speakers?

“No,” he replies. “As the sound is spread out over nine speakers, they can be much smaller than those of contemporary stereo installations.” He draws a parallel with the transition from mono to stereo in the 1960s. “‘Why do I suddenly need two speakers,’ people asked at that time, ‘and to which one of the two should I listen?’”

Paramount includes one cover, David Bowie’s “Heroes”. Strangely enough, the title has been changed to “We Can Be Heroes”. “That was a

From 5 March

request from Bowie and Brian Eno, who co-wrote the song,” explains Goddaer. “They found it such a different version that they thought it deserved a new title.”

Although the new album is called Paramount, Goddaer isn’t claiming that he sees himself as the best of the best. But working with a symphonic orchestra “is probably the highest, the most I can aim for,” he says. “And I could realise it with people, both musicians and technicians, who are among the best in their field. For me, it’s really paramount.”

For fans, too, it seems: Three of the five dates are already sold out.

Across Belgium

Preoccupation with linking love and death at Klara www.klarafestival.be

Love, state the organisers of the 11th edition of the Klara Festival, is possibly the most popular theme in musical history. They prove this hypothesis, under the theme If Love Could Be, with more than 20 concerts organised across Brussels (and one each in Bruges and Antwerp).

World-famous Flemish conductor René Jacobs leads the Freiburger Barockorchester through the baroque opera The Barber of Seville by Giovanni Paisiello, a prototype of a comic rollercoaster, filled to the brim with amorous complications.

Artists, be it composers, authors or film directors, like to link love with death. Frenchmen Olivier Messiaen was one of them, as his Turangalîla Symphony shows. The 20th-century masterpiece is performed by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo.

Romeo and Juliet, one of history’s most famous love stories, has inspired countless composers.

One of them was Sergei Prokofiev, who wrote a score for a ballet based on Shakespeare’s drama. Even without dancers, the music, played by Russia’s Musica Aeterna, takes listeners on a dark journey where love is doomed.

Speaking of which, the Brussels Philharmonic plays the music during a screening of

René Jacobs leads the Freiburger Barockorchester in the rousing score from The Barber of Seville

West Side Story, where the Romeo and Juliet scenario plays out amid the gangs of New York.

One of the greatest musical melodramas in the history of cinema, this screening with live

orchestra accompaniment is a Klara highlight.

Klara is the Flemish public broadcaster VRT’s radio station dedicated to classical music in all its forms, from baroque to Bernstein. But Klara also lends a place to experimental and jazz music. Nothing That Is Everything is the new project from Stef Kamil Carlens and Aarich Jespers of rock band Zita Swoon. They were inspired by the atmosphere of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, where the seeds of dada were planted during the First World War. For the most surprising evening of the Klara Festival, you’re expected at Fuse, the Brussels nightclub that in the 1990s was the womb of revolutionary techno music. Yellow Lounge, a concept that was born in the trendy cultural trenches of contemporary Berlin, is an evening of short gigs by classical musicians mixed in with DJ sets. Indeed, classical music and party aren’t antipodes anymore.

By the way, as you might have expected, many of these concerts will be broadcast on Klara. \ CV

6-21 March

Across Brussels

\ AGENDA

march 4, 2015

From democracy to motherhood

CONCERT

Mind the Book 5-8 March

M

ind the Book, the kick-off of Flanders’ Book Week, switches between Ghent and Antwerp every year, and this year the latter hosts the festival at deSingel. Rich with a wide range of special guests, the festival takes a critical look at contemporary society. Focusing on socially conscious fiction and non-fiction, it gives readers and writers the chance to indulge in debates and lectures and browse the bookshop.

This year’s eclectic mix of subjects sounds timeless, but everything is placed in a modern context, from freedom, exclusion, poverty and growth to love, Napoleon and domestic bliss. International

Brussels Frank Boeijen: The Dutch singer-songwriter performs his characteristic array of dark yet romantic folk songs.

11 March 20.00, Ancienne Belgique, Anspachlaan 110

deSingel, Antwerp

www.mindthebook.be

Women’s Day falls on 8 March and also figures heavily.

Celebrated Dutch-American sociologist and economist Saskia Sassen gets things rolling on Thursday evening with her take on globalisation and international migration. On the same evening, renowned Dutch author Cees Noteboom talks to journalist Piet Piryns about his life, career and an ever-changing society, while Flemish actor Els Dottermans adds her own flair to a few of Noteboom’s texts.

Also at the festival is British philosopher John Gray (pictured) of Straw Dogs fame, who discusses why freedom is merely an illu-

\ www.abconcerts.be

FILM Brussels sion, and Canadian author and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald (The Way the Crow Flies), who tackles the myths of motherhood together with Flemish TV journalist Annelies Beck.

Flemish author Dimitri Verhulst (De helaasheid der dingen) closes the festival with what should be an interesting discussion with TV journalist Phara De Aguirre about the novella he wrote for Book

Week.

Most talks with international authors at Mind the Book are in English. You won’t find language information on the website, so if in doubt, contact the organisation. Most Mind the Book events are held at deSingel, but several other locations, such as M HKA, CinemaZuid and Antwerp University, are offering additional, related programming. \ Rebecca Benoot

FILM FESTIVAL

D’Angelo

Offscreen Film Festival Vorst Nationaal, Brussels www.vorst-nationaal.be

Lo and behold, D’Angelo, patron saint of R&B and new soul lovers, has risen from the dead. After a 14-year hiatus in which the US singer with the golden falsetto and the slow-burning songs reportedly battled with substance abuse problems, the law and a stubborn creative rut, D’Angelo is back with a vengeance. He has not only released a superb new album to rave reviews, he is also touring Europe. This is the final show – your chance to see a creative genius everyone hoped but no-one expected would ever be able shake off his demons long enough to stage a comeback like this.

4-22 March

Antwerp Across Brussels www.offscreen.be

There are plenty of film festivals celebrating both mainstream cinema and seriously underappreciated art-house productions. Offscreen isn’t one of them. This quirky annual event is all about cult film. Yes, those late-night, dollar-bin affairs with low budgets, ham-fisted performances and overthe-top sex and violence. Dozens of screenings of B-movies new and old are spread out across several Brussels venues. The guest of honour is American filmmaker Tobe Hooper, director of both schlock horror (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, pictured) and more crowd-pleasing fare (Poltergeist). There’s also a special programme devoted to mutant – often murderous – plants and fungi in cinema history. \ Georgio Valentino

\ Linda A Thompson

EVENT Brussels Fun Food & Acting with Gili the Mentalist: The monthly expat night combining dinner and a show finds Gili the Mentalist taking the audience along into the misty world of psychics and hypnotists (in English; dinner optional).

10 March 19.00, Fun Food & Acting, Gulden Vliesgalerijen 396

EVENT

Leuven Jazz Festival

Museum Night Fever

Leuven Jazz Festival has grown from a modest musical gathering to a city-wide shindig. Cultural centre 30CC began organising a jazz programme in the context of Leuven’s Kulturama festival, but it soon became clear that Leuven Jazz was its own animal. Since establishing its own identity in 2013, the festival has effectively colonised the city, with a full dozen participating venues. Artists include Flemish luminaries like contemporary composer Jef Neve as well as international sensations like young American pianist Aaron Parks (pictured) and his quartet. There’s also a selection of jazz-related but non-musical activities, film screenings and exhibitions. \ GV

Across Leuven www.leuvenjazz.be

7 March, from 19.00 Every year, Brussels museums throw open their doors for a night of unconventional artistic creation. This edition finds 23 venues partnered with educational institutions, nonprofits and independent artists to create their own programmes, taking the museum’s identity and collections as their point of departure. You’ll find live baroque music and modern dance coming together at a medieval ball in the vaulted, underground rooms of the Coudenberg, while over at Jubelpark, street art is presented as a contemporary variation of the ancient Lascaux rock engravings.

Free MIVB shuttles link the venues, granting easy access to everything.

Visitors will be entertained even in transit. \ GV

Luk Perceval: With a mixed cast of German and Flemish actors, Thalia Theater Hamburg and NTGent perform a piece based on the classic book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Paul Remark, about a world torn apart by war (in German with Dutch surtitles). 4-6 March 20.00, deSingel, Desguinlei 25 \ www.desingel.be

MUSIC FESTIVAL 18-22 March

\ www.bozar.be

PERFORMANCE

CONCERT 7 March, 20.00

West Side Story: Screening of the legendary film restored to high definition with live performance of Leonard Bernstein’s music by the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra on the occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary (in English with subtitles in Dutch and French). 9 March 20.00, Bozar, Ravensteinstraat 23

\ www.ffact.be

VISUAL ARTS

Across Brussels www.museumnightfever.be

Antwerp Dries Van Noten: Inspirations: A glimpse into the creative process and inspiration behind the work of the world-renowned Flemish fashion designer. Until 19 July, MoMu, Nationalestraat 28 \ www.momu.be

Kortrijk Occupied Emotions: Group show centred on the First World War, the destruction but also the longing for harmony and freedom and the creation of the femme fatale, featuring works by more than 20 mostly female artists. Until 26 April, Broelkaai 6 \www.bu-box.be

© Babel Photos

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march 4, 2015

Talking Dutch Try, try, try again

Jeffrey Palms @freypalm Something I’ve been wondering re: the fine city of Ghent: Who called them “men from Ghent” and not “Ghentlemen”?

Derek Blyth More articles by Derek \ flanderstoday.eu

I

checked again to make sure.

But the headline was clear.

Schaarbeekse rugbyclub vestigt wereldrecord met uitslag 356-3 – Schaarbeek rugby club beats world record with score of 356-3, it said on the website brusselnieuws.be.

Within a few days, the story was being reported around the world.

It turned up on the BBC and The Guardian website. It was being talked about as far away as Singapore.

But what really happened on that rugby pitch to create such a mindboggling score? I went back to brusselnieuws.be for the full story.

It seems that Schaerbeek’s Royal Kituro team scored 56 tries – 38 of which were converted, which means extra points – while the rival team from Soignies (Zinnik in Dutch) managed a solitary drop goal.

But this impressive score wasn’t just a matter of skilful playing by the Brussels side. Oorzaak van de onwaarschijnlijke score is dat tegenpartij Zinnik al grotendeels naar huis was – this highly improbable score was caused because most of the Soignies team had headed back home.

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Soignies players barely move as Kituro runs rampant around them

It turns out that the referee didn’t show up, so Soignies assumed the game was cancelled. But no. Kituro ging op zoek naar een vervanger, die besloot dat de match toch gespeeld moest worden – Kituro found a substitute referee, who decided that the match had to be played.

The only problem was that the remaining members of the Soignies team were, well, doing what rugby players do. De andere spelers waren aan het verbroederen in het café van de Schaarbeekse club – the other players were enjoying the hospitality in the Schaarbeek team’s clubhouse. (Drinking beer, I think you can assume.)

The referee insisted that the remaining Soignies players had to

play the match to secure a point.

Door op het veld te staan, vermeden ze forfaitcijfers – Simply by standing on the pitch, they avoided forfeiting the game and coming away with no points.

You can view a YouTube video to see what happened next. Look closely, and you will see that there are quite a lot of Soignies players just standing around doing nothing.

It turned out that they still had 16 players on the pitch. I was totally baffled by now because I thought a rugby team consisted of 15 players. So they had a full team and even one to spare. So the story now makes no sense at all. But then I have never understood rugby.

Even more baffling, the losing side seemed to come out ahead of the winners. Ondanks het catastrofale resultaat blijft Zinnik op de derde plaats in de competitie staan, met één punt meer dan de Schaarbekenaars van Royal Kituro – despite the catastrophic result, Soignies remain in third place, one point above Schaarbeek’s Royal Kituro.

Can someone please explain?

Tweet us your thoughts @FlandersToday

Poll

a. Of course. You can’t have it both ways. If workers can’t have their annual increase, why should landlords?

70% b. No. The increase is minimal, and the principle of not interfering with property owners is important.

Keep the rent index

0% c. Austerity always seems to hit the poor the hardest. Keep the wage increase and skip the rent increase for a year instead

30% proposal last year to skip the wage index this year, meaning no one in the country will get the usual automatic pay rise based on the cost of living. So now the question is: Should the rent index – where your rent goes up according to that same inflation – also be skipped?

You might be inclined to say yes –

unless you’re a landlord.

Peeters can take comfort from the huge margin of support among Flanders Today readers for his position. No fewer than 70% of you think it’s only fair to skip the increase. And of those who disagree, it’s only because you’re more militant.

\ Next week's question: Facebook has come under close scrutiny over alleged breaches of privacy. What do you think?

Log on to the Flanders Today website at www.flanderstoday.eu and click on VOTE!

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SAM SMITH @samsmithworld Brussels!!!! WHAT AN OPENING TO THE TOUR!!!! https:// instagram.com/p/zs4T2Mx2ad/

In response to: Dramatic fall in applications for Belgian nationality Liliana Bordeianu Aki Baihaki, here’s your venting opp ..

In response to: Talking Dutch: I want to ride my bicycle Michelle Kaylor It’s okay out here in the suburbs. Downtown? Hell no!!!

In response to: Offside: Keeping score Luther Pemberton Sounds like England vs The Netherlands a few years back.

In response to: Seven percent of lecturers fail or refuse to take English test Adrian Liston An English test to teach in English is not going to phase international professors.

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the last word

Should the government skip the rent index this year since it’s skipping the wage index?

Right now, as Flanders Today goes to press, federal economy minister Kris Peeters (CD&V) and Flemish housing minister Liesbeth Homans (N-VA) are debating the issue of skipping the annual indexation of rents.

Here’s what it boils down to: The federal government approved a

VoiceS of flanders today

Man of the people

Serious fun

“He was a missionary of the street, who had chosen to live as a homeless man among the homeless. In that sense he was a true pilgrim.”

“It won’t be simple entertainment. No roundabouts with airplane-shaped seats. Those days are over. This will be a thinkand do-park.”

Hans-Peter Fischer, rector of the prestigious Camposanto dei Teutonici e Fiamminghi in Rome, where Willy Herteleer, a Flemish exile in the Holy City, has been given a last resting place

Jack Schoepen, son of the legendary Bobbejaan, will open his own aviation-themed amusement park near Mol in 2017

Losing a friend

“The façade is only four metres wide, so, if you don’t like it, you’ll be past it in no time.”

“I was lucky in a way that Philippe wasn’t. Since I’m larger than he is, the effects were delayed longer, until the doctors could treat me.”

West Flemish businessman Mario Bulckaert was with his friend, cycling sponsor Philippe Vandendorpe, when both had poison slipped in their drinks by an unknown assailant in Gran Canaria. Vandendorpe did not survive

Home sweet home Artist Marc Vanslembrouck’s handpainted house in Ghent features in the new book Ugly Belgian Houses, based on the well-known website

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