Flanders (i) Magazine #30 - Fall 2014

TAKE 30 | FALL 2014 | E 3.99

BAL IS BACK VINCENT BAL’S BELGIAN RHAPSODY

PETER DE MAEGD PRODUCING THE FUTURE

Douglas Boswell Game On

ADIL EL ARBI VEERLE BAETENS WOUTER BONGAERTS FRANK VAN DEN EEDEN BILALL FALLAH SAHIM OMAR KALIFA DAVE KEHR NICO LEUNEN ROEL MONDELAERS MICHAËL R ROSKAM #talentmatters

X EN FRANÇAIS

TEODORA ANA MIHAI FLEMISH FEMS RULE DOC ARENA

C NTENT

TAKE 30

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13 CineFile Nine female documentary filmmakers talk about the current phenomenon in Flanders: a sharp increase in the number of women making documentaries

i-opener A look at Kadir Balci’s second feature, Marry Me

Talent Matters Featuring Frank van den Eeden, Wouter Bongaerts, Veerle Baetens, Nico Leunen, Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, and Michaël R Roskam

this is IN PRINT

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/ Every morning, Zino the rooster encourages four chickens to lay a big egg, because a big-egg-a-day keeps the butcher away!

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/ Dimitri, a little bird from northern Europe has landed on the plain of Ubuyu in Africa. Every day he learns to overcome his fears and discovers a world full of surprises. In Ubuyu being different is an asset that he will share with Makeba the giraffe, Oko the zebra and Pili the meerkat.

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The magazine

Flip this publication to discover a magazine that talks about non-theatrical content

En annexe de cette publication vous trouverez le supplément en français

Frederik Nicolai / frederik@offworld.be troupe’s spirited efforts often outweigh INT’L SALES / Off WorldCompany / www.offworld.be their talent. president Jos

LANGUAGE / Dutch DURATION / 9 x 50’ YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2013-2014 CONTACT / Helena Vlogaert / helena.vlogaert@caviarcontent.com

CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Frank Dencentre Engel,of PITCH / Everyday lifeVan in the

CAST / Liesa Van Der Aa, Wouter Hendrickx, Tom Dewispelaere, Veerle Baetens, Geert Van Rampelberg SCRIPTED BY / Carl Joos DIRECTED BY / Tim Mielants PRODUCTION COMPANY / Eyeworks LANGUAGE / Dutch DURATION / 10 x 50’ YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2014 (in post-production) CONTACT / Peter Bouckaert / peter.bouckaert@eyeworks.tv INT’L SALES / Eyeworks Distribution / www.eyeworks.tv

is hell-bent on reversing their fortune, even if it means replacing Jan with a professional director.

AMATEURS

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CREATED/DIRECTED BYthe / Agnes Lecreux, Ben PITCH / Over last few years, theTesseur,

Steven Deworld Beul, of Fabien Drouet the contemporary arts has PRODUCTION Lundi! (FR), beenCOMPANY subject to/ Vivement drastic change.

Beast Animation (BE), Nadasdy Film Our modern-day taste is (CH) no longer LANGUAGE / French, Dutch determined by museums or critics DURATIONbut / 26 5’ + 1 x and 26’ rich collectors. byx dealers YEAR OF PRODUCTION 2013-2014 Art Collectors/ offers a look into the CONTACTdifferent / Ben Tesseur / ben@beastanimation.be processes involved in the INT’L SALES / France Télévisions Distribution / actual micro-economy of art business. www.tvfrance-intl.com

David Verhaeghe Antwerp comes to a sudden standstill PRODUCTION COMPANY Offhermetically World when the area/ is sealed off LANGUAGE / Dutch, English, world.

German, Russian, from the outside The causeSpanish is (English, Dutch, French, German subtitles) a contagious and deadly virus, which DURATIONspreads / 10 x 26’ like wildfire. Tens of people YEAR OF PRODUCTION 2015 are suddenly/ left to their own devices.

CONTACT It / Eric Goossens eric.goossens@offworld.be / brings out the/ very best in them, but Frederik Nicolai / frederik@offworld.be also the worst...

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CORDON

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PITCH / Percy and his friends go on a joyful adventure where they are each a knight, princess, superhero and pirate. Each episode they encounter a

VOICE CAST / (Dutch) Sara Gracia, Anne-Mieke Ruyten, PITCH / An insight into today’s Tina Maerevoet, GrietBelgian Dobbelaere, Petersoccer Van Gucht promising national CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Jean-Marie Musique, the team, the ‘Red Devils’. Experience Christine Parisse, Federico Milellaof this Belgian fervor and suspense PRODUCTION COMPANY / Fabrique (LUX), football renaissance bothD’Images on and off Skyline Entertainment the pitch. (BE), Grid Animation (BE) LANGUAGE / English, Dutch, French DURATION / 52 x 11’ YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2013-2014 CONTACT / Mark Mertens / mark@grid-vfx.com INT’L SALES / Planet Nemo Animation / DEADLINE 25/5 www.planetnemoanimation.com ORIGINAL TITLE / DEADLINE 25/5

HERE COME THE BELGIANS

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#talentmatters CAST / Marc Van Eeghem, Stany Crets, Ludo Hoogmartens, Matteo Simoni, Evelien Bosmans SCRIPTED BY / Jef Hoogmartens, Jonas Van Geel, Steve Aernouts DIRECTED BY / Frank Van Passel

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amateur production. playwright and

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2014 Led by enthusiastic

CONTACT would-be / Eric Goossens / eric.goossens@offworld.be / PRODUCTION COMPANY / Caviar Antwerp NV director Jan Delvo, the

WITH / Frieda Van/ Wijck (host) Frieda PITCH Helena De Ridder is a young CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Peter and ambitious publicVandekerckhove prosecutor. Week PRODUCTION Raconteurs afterCOMPANY week she/ De wages her own war for LANGUAGE / French, Dutch and justice.

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DURATION / 26 x 11’20” YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2013 GRAND CENTRAL BELGE RIDDER - SEASON 1 CONTACT / EricDE Goossens / ORIGINAL TITLE / GRAND CENTRAL BELGE eric.goossens@walkingthedog.be ORIGINAL TITLE / DE RIDDER - SEIZOEN 1 INT’L SALES / Superights / www.superights.net

With thanks to the producers that supplied information.

PHOTO CREDITS Cordon ©Maarten De Bouw / Homegrown ©Frederik Beyens / De Ridder ©Johan Jacobs / Deadline 25/5 ©vtm / ORIGINAL TITLE / PERCY’S TIGER TALES (PERCY ET SES AMIS) ORIGINAL TITLE / IEDEREEN DUIVEL all other stills copyrighted by the respective producers.

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PRODUCTION COMPANYparish / Off World nondescript hall, the

LANGUAGE / Dutch, French subtitles) Pajotters’ theatre(English company toils away DURATIONon / 3their x 52’latest

VOICE CAST / (English) Georgina Verbaan, PITCH / In Grand Central Belge,

Flanders Image / p/a Flanders Film House, challenge, which they’ll overcome by Bischoffsheimlaan 38 / BE1000 Brussels / Belgium/EU great teamwork.

T +32 2 226 0630 / F +32 2 219 1936 / E flandersimage@vaf.be

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#talentmatters

CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Gilles Sofie Benoot awayCoton, in a tiny, PITCH / Tucked

PITCH / Kika & Bob travel the world to bring back Tilly, the price pigeon of Miss Haakmans, who has captured Kika’s beloved cat Tiger and won’t let him go until she has her Tilly back.

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CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Niko Meulemans through the PITCH / Travelling PRODUCTION COMPANY / 1st-day countryside and towns to the Belgian LANGUAGE / English (USA), Russian, Dutch, French, coast, Archibelge! takes an unusual Norwegian, Spanish, Indonesian, … look at the Portuguese, thought behind, and the DURATIONlifestyle / 25 x 7’ of people living in everyday YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2015 Belgian architecture.

CONTACT / Melanie Chabrier / melanie@1st-day.com INT’L SALES / Mediatoon / www.mediatoon.com

Lenny Mark Richard Bal, VanIrons, Wijck walksWells, alongVincent the 19thTess Bryant, Chris private Brookerrailway line of the century

CREATED/DIRECTED BYwhich / Yannick Zanchetta, same name, linked Wallonia

Paul De Blieck Flanders and which was predominantly

PRODUCTION / Walking The Dog usedCOMPANY to transport the riches of (BE),

CREATED/DIRECTED BY / Joeria Vlekken PITCH / Marianne, former journalist, PRODUCTION / Bonka Circus getsCOMPANY shaken by a tragic incident. At the LANGUAGE / Dutch, French same time, Belgium is getting ready for DURATIONthe / 9 long-expected x 49’ + 1 compilation (DutchFollow-up version) / elections.

8 x 52’ (French / 1 x 52’ (English version) seriesversion) to Deadline 14/10 (also 8x50’).

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2014 CONTACT / Catherine Castille / catherine@bonkacircus.com INT’L SALES / Bonka Circus / www.bonkacircus.com

25/03/14 11:29

CAST / Clara Cleymans, Michaël Pas, Katelijne Damen, Lynn Van Royen, Dahlia Pessemiers-Benamar SCRIPTED BY / Rik D’hiet DIRECTED BY / Lars Goeyvaerts, Tom Goris PRODUCTION COMPANY / Eyeworks, VRT LANGUAGE / Dutch DURATION / 13 x 50’ YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2013 CONTACT / Peter Bouckaert / peter.bouckaert@eyeworks.tv INT’L SALES / Eyeworks Distribution / www.eyeworks.tv

CAST / Charlotte Vandermeersch, Peter Van den Begin, Koen De Bouw, Ruth Becquart, Marc Lauwrys CREATED BY / Ed Vanderweyden Rudy Morren, Nicholas Roelandts, Geert Bouckaert, Dirk Nielandt DIRECTED BY / Maarten Moerkerke PRODUCTION COMPANY / Menuet LANGUAGE / Dutch DURATION / 8 x 50’ YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2013-2014 CONTACT / Menuet / info@menuet.be

25/03/14 11:27

25/03/14 11:23

A series of content flyers and e-newsletters presenting an overview of recent, new and upcoming audiovisual productions made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium

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46 Peter De Maegd Cub producer Peter De Maegd connects the potential of the internet to traditional film and TV formats

Vincent Bal Vincent Bal returns to Belgium to present what is believed to be Flanders’ very first musical, Belgian Rhapsody

Douglas Boswell Douglas Boswell’s feature debut Labyrinthus is a family film that combines real world adventure with the fantasy of computer games

Roel Mondelaers Roel Mondelaers set himself a challenge for his feature debut: to make a film in the American rom-com tradition: Plan Bart

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52 Dave Kehr MoMA Film adjunct curator Dave Kehr on Caroline Strubbe’s Lost Person’s Area and I'm the same I'm an other

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Sahim Omar Kalifa Who and what inspires award-winning filmmaker Sahim Omar Kalifa?

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ONLINE

ON SITE

flandersimage.com The website keeps you up-to-date on audiovisual talent and content made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium. Read the news when it happens, browse and search in the online product guide, or get the environmentally friendly digital versions of publications such as the magazine, brochures and flyers

Flanders Image also attends several festivals and markets such as Annecy, Berlin, Cannes, Cartoon Forum, Clermont-Ferrand, Idfa, Mipcom, Miptv, Montréal, Toronto and many more

screener.be The promotional V.O.D. platform that is available to sales agents, buyers and curators around the globe interested in audiovisual talent and creations from Flanders and Brussels, Belgium

SOCIAL

ON THE BAETENS TRACK. Veerle Baetens, the Flemish actress who starred in Belgium’s Foreign Language Oscar nominee The Broken Circle Breakdown, continues to break down barriers in her own foreign-language career, landing a key role in a major new French film.

Baetens, 36, made her English-language debut last year playing Margaret of Anjou in the BBC/Starz miniseries The White Queen and will be back on British screens in the near future, this time speaking her native language in Cordon – about the outbreak of a deadly virus in Antwerp – which has been bought by BBC4.

Baetens’s next big-screen role, meanwhile, will be in yet another language – French – in Cordon Un début prometteur (A Promising Debut), the second feature from French writer/ director Emma Luchini. Baetens will play opposite rising star Manu Payet and the director’s famous actor father, Fabrice, in a story of three generations based on the much-praised first novel by Nicolas Rey. Baetens has won two best actress awards – at the Tribeca

Film Festival and the European Film Awards – for The Broken Circle Breakdown, which was a sizeable hit in France, where it was released as Alabama Monroe, notching up over 200,000 admissions. Nick Roddick

BEST OF EEDEN. Flemish cinematographer Frank van den Eeden won two top awards at this year’s Flemish Oscar equivalents, the Ensors. But, he says, his real interest is not winning prizes: it’s finding the best way to realise the director’s vision.

The Verdict on flandersimage.com

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It was a good night for top Flemish DoP Frank van den Eeden when the 2014 Ensor Awards were announced at the Ostend Kursaal. He got to make two trips to the podium, one for Best Cinematography (on Jan Verheyen’s box-office hit The Verdict); the other to pick up the Flemish Culture Award for Film 2013-2014. The citation for the latter spoke of his ‘dramaturgical insights’ and the fact that ‘his work is entirely devoted to the story’. The film, in other words, always comes first – which is just the way the Antwerp-based DoP thinks it ought to be.

‘When I first heard about it,’ he says. ‘I was a bit surprised because I consider myself too young for a “lifetime achievement” kind of thing. But what the jury said was that their focus was not only on the diversity of my work - which

LUX..

LURES..

LEUNEN..

Lux Artists has signed up Belgian editor Nico Leunen, who was profiled in our last issue.

The London-based agency specialises in behind-the-camera talent such as Directors of Photography, production designers and costume designers as well as editors. He joins such top European cutting-room talent as Nick Emerson (Starred Up), François Gedigier (Yves Saint Laurent), Mikkel EG Nielsen (A Royal Affair) and Jacob Schulsinger (Nymphomaniac).

Leunen has over 50 editing credits, including some of Flanders’s best known films, including Someone Else’s Happiness, The Misfortunates and The Broken Circle Breakdown. His most recent high-profile credit is Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River, which had its world premiere at Cannes in May. Nick Roddick luxartists.net

'I think basically what the jury were trying to say was, "You're a really nice guy"' I really appreciate - but also on my working relationships with people. I think basically what they were trying to say was, “You’re a really nice guy”.’

A glance at van den Eeden’s filmography indeed shows directors as diverse as Verheyen, Nanouk Leopold and Fien Troch coming back for more: Verheyen for Dossier K. (2009) and The Verdict; Leopold for Brownian Movement (2010) and It’s All So Quiet (2013) and Fien Troch for Someone Else’s Happiness (2005), Unspoken (2008) and Kid (2012).

The Verdict is a perfect showcase for his skills, giving the film the sheen of a high-class thriller, with its muted palette and sunless exteriors, but strikingly enough lit and shot never to be mistaken for a TV movie.

Not that the 43-year-old DoP wants you to notice his work. He wants, he says, to be ‘solely at the disposal of the director. I spend a lot of days reading the script and going through it scene by scene to find out with the director how it should be shot. That explains why all these films are very different. I wouldn’t like people to see one of my films and say “Ah, this was shot by Frank van den Eeden;

I recognise his hand”.’

Van den Eeden trained, like so many Flemish filmmakers, at St. Lukas in Brussels, intending, like most film students, to become a director. ‘I thought “That’s the guy who takes care of the look and feel of the film”. But soon I realised “This is not the way it goes!”. And mostly I found out that good cinematography goes way further than making stuff look good. ' Van den Eeden is not especially eager to focus on big budget Hollywood productions, because he suspects it would call for a different way of working. ‘Of course, I would be delighted if my films could be viewed, not by one million people at the most, but maybe by 10 million. That would be great!’ he says. ‘But I don’t have a fetish for doing bigbudget films: I have a fetish for doing interesting films with interesting directors, wherever they are.’ Already in the can are Zurich with Sacha Polack and Full Contact with David Verbeek, with Waldstille - 'very much my cup of tea: a moody and "muted" story' – due to start shooting in January with Martijn Maria Smits at the helm. Nick Roddick

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WOUTER BONGAERTS: OF MICE AND MIA. Wouter Bongaerts picked up a shelf-full of prizes for his latest short.

But he reckons he still has a lot to learn about animation.

Ten years ago, Wouter Bongaerts, now 28, had just dropped out of a teacher training course and was at a loose end.

Now he is a full-time animator with two highly acclaimed shorts. ‘Back then,’ he says, ‘I started drawing, more out of boredom than anything else. Then one day I passed an art school with an open day. I went in, saw there was a course for animation and I thought “Wow, that’s awesome”. I felt a bit of a failure, just drawing stuff. But that turned out to be the thing I should be doing!’

The stuff Bongaerts has drawn to date includes Mouse for Sale, his graduation project from the MAD Faculty in Genk, which won him a VAF Wildcard – a scholarship designed to help young filmmakers make their professional film debut and Mia, a nine-minute short whose festival career would take the rest of this page to list.

Mouse for Sale is a charming, Pixar-style story of a mouse languishing in a pet shop because his ears are too big, while Mia – about a little girl whose joie de vivre finally bursts through a grey, two-dimensional world – is thematically and visually much more ambitious. ‘You have a lot of shorts with a very strong concept and then you have shorts that are emotionally strong,’ says Bongaerts, ‘but there are not a lot that can combine the two. For Mia, I really wanted to create an interesting concept and also at the same time merge it with the emotional core of the story.’

Mia was completed last summer and, since then, Bongaerts has been working on commercials and as a background artist on the 2D feature, Triple Trouble. He sees this as part of a learning curve, in that every aspect of animation is fascinating and worth mastering. ‘I would love to continue directing films,’ he says, 'but I am just as eager to be part of a production team: the more experience I get in every department, the better a director I will be.’ In the meantime, Bongaerts is developing a new short with a core team of three people: writing partner Bert Vandecasteele and storyboard designers Bartel Bruneel and Joris Bergmans. ‘It’s still a bit up there and moving around,’ he concludes. ‘If I say something now it will be different next week. But what I can say is that it’s the story of a man whose life gets hit by a tidal wave…’ Nick Roddick Mia on flandersimage.com Mouse for Sale on flandersimage.com Trailer Mia Trailer Mouse for Sale Wouter Bongaerts

LONDON CALLING.

Jakob Verbruggen

Jakob Verbruggen on flandersimage.com Trailer The Fall

Jakob Verbruggen is to direct new BBC TV series London Spy, starring Ben Whishaw.

Flemish director Jakob Verbruggen, who made his name back home with the TV series (and subsequently feature) Code 37, will add another international feather to his cap when he returns to the UK to direct the five-part TV series London Spy, starring British actor Ben Whishaw (Skyfall, Lilting) for BBC Two. Verbruggen previously directed five episodes of the highly acclaimed BBC TV series The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson, and has since tackled a couple of episodes of the US TV remake of Nordic noir thriller The Bridge, set on the US-Mexico border and starring Diane Kruger and Demian Bichir.

London Spy is written by Tom Rob Smith, best known for the Child 44 TV trilogy (2008), currently being turned into a feature produced by Ridley Scott. Whishaw plays Danny, a pleasure-loving romantic who falls in love with the mysterious Alex and finds himself sucked into the dangerous world of British espionage. It is a Working Title production for BBC Two. London Spy looks like being the latest British TV series to bank on a fresh, non-British eye behind the camera, following the success of Danish thrillers The Killing and The Bridge. Shooting is due to start in London later this month (October 2014). Nick Roddick

‘WE WANT TO GO ON. MAKING TWO MOVIES. A YEAR’.

Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah on flandersimage.com Trailer Image Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are two young filmmakers who have just completed shooting Black, their second film of the year. And they show no sign of slowing down.

Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have been sharing the directing credit on their movies since they were at film school (St Lukas in Brussels) and claim never to have had a serious falling-out.

They’re not actually brothers, says Adil, ‘but we are so that’s almost the same. At film school we were the only two Moroccans, so that’s why we clicked. We hesitate about the same stuff, we’re sure about the same stuff. Sometimes we even dress a little bit alike!’ ‘We’re like a gang,’ says Bilall with a chuckle.

Not surprisingly, the pair’s graduation short was called Brothers, and is a moral fable about two guys from the same hood, one a drug dealer, the other a community worker. Completed in 2011, it won prizes at two Belgian film festivals and, perhaps more importantly, a VAF Wildcard – part of a scheme designed to encourage new talent - from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).

The €60,000 that came with the Wildcard went towards funding their first feature, Image, which is due to be released in Belgium this November. An ambitious tale of racial conflict in Brussels’ Moroccan ‘hood’, the film focuses on Eva, a young reporter who befriends a street-wise Moroccan called Lahbib as he shows her his world. But her plan to make a documentary which will foster closer understanding between communities goes badly wrong when her ratings-hungry boss co-opts the film for his own less noble ends.

‘That’s our world,’ says Adil, of the streets on which Image is set and filmed. ‘It’s our neighbourhood; the actors are the kind of people that we hang around with.’ But the style, he admits, owes more to Scorsese than to St Lukas. ‘When we wanted to become filmmakers it was by watching stuff from Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone…

That’s our kind of cinema.’

On the set with Adil El Arbi (l) & Bilall Fallah (r)

With Image about to be released, Adil and Bilall have wasted no time on a follow-up and are already in post-production on their second feature, Black, based on the book by Dirk Bracke - a Romeo-and-Juliet story set in the suburbs of Brussels about a black female gang member who falls in love with a Moroccan guy from another gang. It is, says Bilall, ‘like City of God and La haine: it has that feeling.’

‘It’s a tough book but also very funny,’ adds Adil.

‘We filmed the whole summer with 16 young actors who we just grabbed off the street. And we shot it in the most fucked up neighbourhood of Brussels. But actually everything went quite OK.’ Shooting on Black ended in the first week of September, and a final cut is expected around the turn of the year – by which time Adil and Bilall expect to be in production on the next film. ‘We are two guys so we have to make twice as many movies,’ says Adil. ‘We have like 10 projects in our head… There are three we are already starting up: one idea to do in France, one in Holland and one thing right here in Belgium…’

‘That’s the way we want to work,’ concludes Bilall. ‘We want to go on making two movies a year…’ Nick Roddick

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TALENTWATCH

ONCE UPON A. TIME IN AMERICA. TEXT IAN MUNDELL

Michaël R Roskam is a rarity among European filmmakers. Not because he made it to Hollywood, but because he has returned with his dreams intact. ‘Very often European directors are disappointed by working there,’ he says. ‘I can see how it can happen, but it was not my personal experience.’

With his US debut, The Drop, now complete Roskam is able to weigh up the European and American approaches to filmmaking. ‘The American system takes some time getting used to, because you have to work with something to which we, as European Independent moviemakers, have a natural resistance. But that resistance is not necessarily right,’ he says. ‘Looking back at the whole production, it was an extremely positive experience.’

The differences are there from the outset. In Europe, the director usually comes up with an idea or selects a script, and together with a producer goes in search of funding.

This creates a different relationship from Hollywood, where producers and investors often work together to develop scripts, then seek out a director.

typical Hollywood

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Roskam appeared on Hollywood’s radar with his debut feature, Bullhead, starring Matthias Schoenaerts as a young Flemish farmer caught up in the illegal trade in growth hormones. As soon as the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, the director started getting calls from US agents.

He signed with UTA, but as a newcomer the scripts they could send him were not the very best. While young American directors can make their names by turning around mediocre scripts, that made no sense to Roskam, who felt he could create first-class material at home. But when they showed him projects higher up the food chain, things looked more interesting. One script in particular grabbed his attention, Animal Rescue by Dennis Lehane, the writer behind Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island.

The story revolves around Bob, a lonely bartender whose life is transformed, for better and worse, when he discovers an abandoned pit-bull puppy. Then the bar where he works is robbed and its mafia owners come looking for their money.

‘I like movies where the main character has to struggle with his own being and face up to destiny,’ Roskam explains.

‘The odds start to turn, he has to fight them, and in fighting them he finds himself.’ When Roskam told his agents that he loved Animal Rescue, they agreed it was great. But with David Cronenberg already in discussions to direct, it was out of his reach.

What followed was typical Hollywood. A few months on,

Cronenberg dropped out and the producers needed another director. This time Roskam was able to pitch, his profile rising thanks to Bullhead’s nomination for the foreignlanguage Oscar and HBO picking up his proposal for a series.

While producer Peter Chernin and the studio, Fox Searchlight Pictures, liked Roskam’s vision there was still a concern that Animal Rescue needed someone with more track record.

Eventually Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Limitless) was signed.

Several more months passed, Burger moved onto another project, and the studio came back to Roskam. Now it was his chance to get the film off the ground. ‘Then it is a matter of casting,’ Roskam explains, ‘of being the right moment for the right people.’

generation gap

A central relationship in Animal Rescue involves Bob and Cousin Marv, a played-out gangster who fronts the bar where Bob works. In Lehane’s script they were both middleaged, but Roskam wanted to introduce a generation gap.

This meant looking for a younger lead.

Roskam was drawn to rising star Tom Hardy (Inception, Lawless). ‘Some actors keep their own voices and change on other level, but Tom is a voice actor, and I knew Bob needed someone who could mask himself without changing his face.’

Hardy quickly said yes, which in turn brought in Noomi Rapace as Nadia, the girl Bob falls for. There was a supporting role for Schoenaerts, and James Gadolfini was cast as Cousin Marv, in what would turn out to be his last screen role.

The speed with which Roskam had to move was another contrast to the way European films are made. He said yes

SCORSESE MEETS CAPRA In making The Drop, Roskam could only take one of his European crew along, Director of Photography Nicolas Karakatsanis. Together they worked out how to capture the big city, yet small town feeling of Brooklyn. ‘I told him that I wanted it to be like a film noir, but without the typical darkness. It is a Christmas story, after all, and I wanted some of those colours.’

They found that colour palette in the work of George Bellows, a painter who documented Brooklyn street life in the early 20th Century. ‘I looked at his work and the colours were precisely those that were still present in Brooklyn.’

The other reference was cinematic. ‘I told the production team: let’s try to make this movie as if Scorsese was shooting It’s A Wonderful Life, or Frank Capra was doing Taxi Driver. Both of them, from different angles, have this one guy, confronted by destiny, and how he reacts to it.’

ACTION MOVIES FOR THE SOUL With The Drop as his second film and plans well underway for his third, Michaël R Roskam has a new perspective on his work. ‘I like to make action movies for the soul,’ he says playfully. ‘I like it when the heartbeat and adrenaline go up, not because of a building exploding but because of an exploding emotion.’

The third film will be The Faithful, a gangster love story set in Brussels during the 1990s, which Roskam is developing with Thomas Bidegain, screenwriter on Jacques Audiard’s The Prophet and Rust and Bone.

Matthias Schoenaerts is expected to star, with the main creative crew from Bullhead reassembling for the shoot.

Savage Film and Eyeworks produce in Belgium, along with Stone Angels in France.

Meanwhile Roskam has recently finished writing the pilot for HBO drama series Buda Bridge, a Brussels crime story set in the near future. Film director Michael Mann and producer Mark Johnson, one of the names behind Breaking Bad, are executive producing the series.

Roskam is the show runner, with an option to direct.

'I like to make action movies for the soul.

I like it when the heartbeat and adrenaline go up, not because of a building exploding but because of an exploding emotion' to Animal Rescue - later retitled The Drop - in October 2012 and in March 2013 he was shooting in Brooklyn. In Europe, the long financing process means that there is time for scripts to be redrafted and polished before shooting begins. This is often when directors make their creative choices, since there is rarely the budget to shoot different versions of key scenes, or editing time to see which works best.

no-other-option feel

In the US, however, working through the options is the norm. Rather than reflecting a lack of conviction, or a lack of trust in the director, this constant questioning is hard-wired into the business model. ‘That was different, but once you get used to it you get things out of it.’

It’s a test for the whole production. ‘Many films get destroyed by it, because the danger is that you can’t see clearly any more. But at the same time, when the team works, the results can be pure excellence.

There is a genius, no-other-option feel to it, which is characteristic of the best American films.’  Michaël R. Roskam on flandersimage.com Trailer Bullhead

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i-opener

MARRY ME In Marry Me, gym teacher Jurgen decides to marry his fellow teacher Sibel. But that's not what their families expected: Jurgen's Flemish parents don't understand why their only son dumped his previous girlfriend to marry a colleague; while Sibel's Turkish brother is agitated by her impulsive decision.

Receiving its world premiere at this year’s Valladolid International Film Festival, where it is presented in Official Competition, Marry Me is Kadir Balci’s second feature. Production company is A Private View (Moscow, Belgium; Oxygen).  Marry Me on flandersimage.com

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nter view

PLEASE RELEASE ME! We are so proud of the filmmaking talent we work with. And we’re hugely proud of the wide variety of films we present.

Through the Flanders Distribution Grant * we are inviting foreign distributors to share our enthusiasm for Belgian Cinema Made In Flanders. They can apply for up to €25,000 (that’s over $32,000) cash to help in positioning the theatrical release of a feature-length Flemish film in their respective markets.

From dubbing to adding extra marketing pizzazz, the Flanders Distribution Grant can make a real difference.

For more info about the Flanders Distribution Grant: flandersimage@vaf.be

*The Flanders Distribution Grant is a selective system. Conditions apply.

flandersimage.com

distribution grant

REEL SOFIE BENOOT

LIESBETH DE CEULAER

MARIA TARANTINO

MOON BLAISSE

WOMEN LOTTE STOOPS

EVA KÜPPER

GRIET TECK

TEODORA ANA MIHAI

> PAGE 16

> PAGE 20

ELLEN VERMEULEN

> PAGE 15

‘IT’S ABOUT TIME WE GOT OUT THERE TO DO IT BECAUSE WE’RE KIND OF HALF OF THE WORLD, RIGHT?’ DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER EVA KÜPPER RESPONDS TO A CURRENT PHENOMENON IN FLANDERS: A SHARP INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF WOMEN MAKING DOCUMENTARIES. MORE WOMEN THAN EVER BEFORE ARE GRADUATING FROM THE REGION’S FILM SCHOOLS WITH AN INTEREST IN THE GENRE – AND WINNING AWARDS ACROSS THE WORLD. TEXT LISA BRADSHAW

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Küpper was one of the filmmakers who started the notable trend of award-winning documentaries made by women in Flanders when her film school graduation project, What’s In A Name, produced by Soul Docs, won Best Student Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010. It was selected for Toronto’s Hot Docs the same year and a number of other festivals over the following two years.

The Ghent-based director won a VAF Wildcard to finish the film – the portrait of a gender-bending New York performance artist – going beyond KASK film school’s usual graduate short to clock in at 70 minutes. ‘I think I was the first – and still the only one – to graduate from the school with a film this long,’ she says. ‘But I had wanted to make this documentary when I was 17, even before I knew I was going to study film.’

Küpper, now 30, partially grew up in the United States. She had known the subject of her film, Jon Cory, since she was a child. ‘I was struck by his sense of liberty, the freedom he felt to be whatever gender he or she wanted to be. You could almost say that I went to film school to make this film.’

What’s In A Name

earning their trust

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It’s a sentiment echoed by many of Flanders’ other female documentary filmmakers – an absolute necessity to be close to your subject, even to empathise with them, regardless of who they may be. Ellen Vermeulen, an alumnus of Brussels’ RITS film school, proves this with her new film 9999. She shot the 72-minute doc in just 12 days, ‘but I prepared it for two years,’ she reveals.

Those many long months were spent earning the trust of five men in a special prison facility in Flanders, each one trapped

by Belgium’s inadequate infrastructure when it comes to treating mentally ill criminals. This group of prisoners, which totals more than 1,200, sits in prison facilities with no release date. The release date on their paperwork is coded ‘9999’.

‘I had to earn their trust,’ says Vermeulen, 31. ‘I was allowed to go there for two years to do research; it was like I was working there.’ She knew that level of commitment was necessary in order to make the film she wanted. ‘I had to talk to them a lot and explain that I wanted to understand their situation.’

To make 9999, which was produced by Bram Crols en Mark Daems of Associate Directors and supported by VAF, the Human Rights League and the Flemish Bar Council, Vermeulen also had to convince the facility’s staff. ‘I made it clear that I didn’t want to attack them as an institution. The staff of the prison system doesn’t like the situation either.’

It was ultimately this closeness to the subject and complete transparency that led to the success of the film, which was released in cinemas across Belgium after screening at numerous film festivals, including Docville, the Pärnu International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF), This Human World and Visions du Réel, where it earned a special jury mention.

feel what they feel

‘Their emotions have to become my emotions,’ explains Vermeulen. ‘I have to feel what they feel. Some acquaintances didn’t understand why I would spend so much time making a film about these people, which I think is terrible. Maybe that is something female – trying to empathise, to understand them. You cannot judge them until you meet them. That’s what Nietzsche said: There is always a connection between us, even if it’s a very, very small connection.’

It’s a point of view that repeats itself from filmmaker to filmmaker and often manifests itself in a personal connection.

In 2010, Griet Teck made the short documentary Johan about her brother, who has a severe form of autism.

The exhibitions and press that followed eventually put her in touch with the director of a rest home in Antwerp province that caters to elderly people with dementia. That led to her feature doc Feel My Love, in which she records a year in the life of several of the residents.

An unhurried and quiet film, Feel My Love, produced by Anna Van der Wee for Wild Heart Productions, was very well received at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, coming in fourth for the Audience Award. ‘People with dementia change in ways that I could relate to a little bit,’ explains Teck, 32. Dementia is still a bit taboo, people don’t know how to handle it. When you are first confronted by it, it is a bit scary, but if you look further, you can make a lot of contact; you can relate to them. That’s why I like to refer to them as people with dementia, not demented people. The person does not become the disease; they are still human beings. They have the same desires and needs as we all do.’

life parallels

Similarly, Teodora Ana Mihai’s feature documentary debut Waiting for August has parallels with her own life. She travelled back to the land of her birth, Romania, to spend several months with a group of seven brothers and sisters who must be self-sufficient while their mother, an economic migrant, works abroad.

A sensitive portrayal of a remarkable teenage girl, Georgiana, and the lengths she goes to run a household while going to school, Waiting for August pulled down both the Best International Feature award from Toronto’s Hot Docs and

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‘WELCOME INTO MY HEAD’ IN BELGIUM, MENTALLY ILL CRIMINALS ARE PUT NOT IN TREATMENT FACILITIES BUT IN PRISON, WITH NO RELEASE DATE. IT’S A SYSTEM FOR WHICH THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN CHASTISED – AND FINED – MORE THAN ONCE BY THE EUROPEAN UNION. THE RELEASE DATE ON THEIR PAPERWORK IS CODED ‘9999’.

Filmmaker Ellen Vermeulen heard about the situation from staff at the country’s League of Human Rights. She went to one of the largest such facilities and asked if she could take a look at the situation in consideration of making a documentary. ‘I was a little naive,’ she says. ‘I just dropped by and asked permission to film there.’ But they in fact embraced the idea and allowed her to work and observe in the institution for nearly two years. Armed with that much preparation, she was able to shoot the film in just 12 days.

9999 was released in cinemas across Belgium last spring after screening at numerous film festivals, including Docville, the Pärnu International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF), This Human World and Visions du Réel, where it earned a special jury mention. Produced by Bram Crols en Mark Daems, the film was supported by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), the Human Rights League and the Flemish Bar Council. It also received the ‘Amnesty Approved’ label.

Her transparency about her intentions, says Vermeulen, earned the trust of prison staff and inmates alike. ‘The prison itself doesn’t like the situation either.

I think they are happy with the film because it’s not criticising their work, it’s criticising the situation.’

She eventually chose five inmates on whom to focus the film. I don’t know how I chose the ones I did, really,’ says Vermeulen, ‘something in the way they moved or talked. One of them kept refusing to work with me. From the beginning, the staff told me: “He will never let you into his room, he will never accept you, he will play games with you.” And he did, for a whole year. And then he finally said: “Welcome into my head”.’

Since Vermeulen made the film, Belgium has opened a 200-person facility specifically for the treatment of mentally ill criminals. ‘But they are very focused on security,’ notes Vermeulen, ‘and I think that what’s most important for these guys is health care.’ But her film did not go unnoticed by the justice system.

‘The director of the new institution came to me and said: “I promise it will be better than what I saw in your movie.”’ He invited her to visit the facility after one year.

Vermeulen’s next project, The Double Life of Marie-Louise, is the story of Marie-Louise Chapelle, who, in 1952, became the first woman to reach the peak of an unconquered Himalayan summit. Chapelle spent six months of every year travelling the world and climbing mountains and the other six at home with her husband and children in Northern France. The film is produced

by Associate Directors.

‘In the beginning, it was more of a film about climbing, then it became a love story, then about children,’ explains Vermeulen. ‘It’s about sacrifice and passion and women, and what do they all mean.’

9999

‘So many young women are making films right now. At documentary film festivals, there are lots of women, and I’m happy to see it. The only question is, will they keep on going, because lots of things happen after you enter your 30s’ - Ellen Vermeulen

‘I think that documentary making is less competitive and more about sharing ideas that could give you more insight into the wider world’ - Lotte Stoops the Best Documentary Film from Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Produced by Hanne Phlypo and Antoine Vermeesch for Clin d’oeil, it also received a Special Mention at Visions du Réel earlier this year.

Mihai, 33, was also separated from her parents for a time when they fled the Ceaușescu regime. Her mother eventually returned to Romania, and Mihai and her brother stayed in Belgium with their father. When their father passed away, Mihai was 24 and her brother just 13. She cared for him on her own. She was old enough to be his legal guardian, but, much like Georgiana in Waiting for August, ‘I didn’t feel prepared to guide a teenager’.

Women, says Küpper, are particularly interested in tapping into these deeply personal themes. ‘Both men and women are capable of making those kinds of connections,’ she says, ‘but women in general have those people skills because we have a strong sense of empathy. You have to immerse youself in a certain world, and you have to find ways to get access to their minds – and to their hearts. It’s very tense and is a personal, confrontational process.’

This is part of the reason why so many women filmmakers are choosing documentary to tell their stories. ‘They’re about real people, real situations,’ says Küpper. ‘When I get into

a project, I fall in love. You’re almost at the point of losing yourself in it. In the end, films are kind of our children. We provide all the nutrition and the heart and soul to try to make sure it comes out with 10 fingers and 10 toes.’

no value judgements

Grande Hotel director Lotte Stoops has similar feelings about building trust and confronting the social conditions of real people. Her 2010 film, produced by Ellen De Waele for

Grande Hotel

LABOUR OF LOVE IN 2010, GRIET TECK MADE A SHORT FILM CALLED JOHAN ABOUT A YOUNG MAN DIAGNOSED WITH BOTH A MENTAL DISABILITY AND A SEVERE FORM OF AUTISM. BUT IT WASN’T JUST ANY YOUNG MAN – IT WAS HER BROTHER.

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Though it’s challenging to have a sibling with autism, she feels very close to Johan. ‘He’s an adult,’ she says, ‘but he will always be at a mental age of about two-and-a-half. I will never be able to talk to him like an adult. We have a different kind of relationship.’

The 32-year-old put her experience with that situation to work again in her feature debut Feel My Love. It follows a year in the life of a home for elderly people with dementia. ‘People with dementia change in ways that I could relate to a little bit,’ she explains.

Feel My Love, produced by Wild Heart Productions, came in fourth for the UPC Audience Award at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival. ‘In Rotterdam, you have all those big productions, so when we were number four, it took me by surprise,’ Teck admits. ‘But it proves that when you make a very little movie about something universal, people notice.’

Teck does not explain the situation at the beginning of the film, preferring to allow the viewer time to absorb what they are seeing. ‘Images say so much more than words,’ she notes. ‘There is no storyline; you’re just taken through the days, the rituals, the seasons. This particular house has a very unique approach. They approach human beings rather than a disease. Each person is really seen as an individual with an emphasis placed on what is still possible for that person.’

Behind the Redwood Curtain

Serendipity Films, is about the 2,500 people living in the ruins of a bombastic 1950s holiday destination in Mozambique for rich Portuguese colonists.

‘I feel a great need to respect people,’ she says. ‘I worked for a couple of years in crisis situations with children and their families, and that called for the creation of immediate trust, too. I was trained to avoid comparing other people’s values with mine, to not judge them but to meet them. That is a very valuable thing to learn, especially for a documentary filmmaker. But not judging doesn’t mean not confronting because confrontation is part of a trust-gaining process.

beautiful and curious

Aside from documentaries being the right tool to communicate these stories, the genre is also more accessible than fiction filmmaking.

‘The documentary scene is more conducive to finding a way into filmmaking for women.' Eva Küpper says. 'It’s less testosterone prone; there’s less ego involved. It’s an environement where women thrive.’

‘The women directors I know are all very beautiful, curious creatures,’ adds Stoops, who is currently working on a film about the concept of living together in terms of public space and citizenship. ‘I think that documentary making is less competitive and more about sharing ideas that could give you more insight into the wider world.’

That’s what interested her in the project, and she spent whole days filming at the home in Antwerp province – which indeed does look like a home rather than like a hospital. She went alone with her camera, dispensing with a crew in order not to disturb the residents, and eventually her presence went unnoticed. ‘I needed the flexibility to pop in,’ she explains. ‘You never know when something is going to happen and you’ll want to be there, so you can’t really plan a shoot. Everyone just got used to me being there.’

With that fly-on-the-wall approach, she captures intimate moments both playful and tragic – from songs shared with volunteers to saying goodbye to someone who’s dying.

‘I was confronted with my own mortality because people die there; that was a new experience for me,’ she says. ‘But it can be a serene experience: Other residents come and go from the room, the family is there, it’s experienced and carried by everybody, and that is why it’s bearable.’

Teck found inspiration from the staff’s approach to caregiving in her own work. ‘Dignity is something I was careful about: Respect, distance.’

The home’s staff members, volunteers and family members of residents were in attendance at the film’s avant première in Belgium earlier this year. There was a standing ovation at the end. Says Teck: ‘I got all the love back that I put in it.’

Feel My Love

CineFile

I could never spend years of my life making a film without “realness” in the confrontation with people.’

For Mihai, 33, it’s not about a wrap party and saying goodbye to a few actors like you would with a fiction film; it’s a story that continues. She planned a holiday at the seaside for the family, and Georgiana has already visited her in Belgium.

‘I wanted to give her the opportunity to do somethinig she would otherwise not be able to do. I think opening up people’s eyes and minds is the best gift you can give.’

Liesbeth De Ceulaer, whose 2013 film Behind the Redwood Curtain (Minds Meet) investigated the struggle between environmentalists and the logging industry in northern California, sums up the feeling quite succinctly: ‘I enjoy working with real people very much. To me, you don’t make a documentary about a character but with them.’

Many women also appreciate the control they have over documentary projects, which they fear losing should they take on fiction features. ‘One of the reasons I chose not to make fiction is the big crews,’ notes Sofie Benoot, 29, the award-winning director of Desert Haze and Blue Meridian, both of which explore the fascinating boundaries, both geographical and metaphysical, of specific American landscapes.

Vermeulen, meanwhile, also appreciated the freedom she had when she broke with the confines of assigned work for 9999. ‘I had made a lot of films before,’ she shares, ‘but they were all on commission. This is the first film I made completely by myself, with no one else’s opinion. Every image was my own choice.’

who stimulate everybody to find their own voice. It seems that when given the opportunity, girls have a lot to say.’

Küpper herself teaches audiovisual techniques along with making movies. ‘I see that with the girls in my class; if you create the right atmosphere, and they see a woman in front of them who has accomplished projects and presents the material with passion, you can really see them raring to go.

Even moreso than the guys. I think education and more openness in teaching is an important part of the recent success.’

Role models, notes Maria Tarantino, 42, are essential to bringing more women into the film industry. Tarantino’s new film Our City, produced by Wildundomesticated and to be released in 2015, is about the fabric that makes up life in Brussels, one of the most diverse, multi-cultural and multilingual cities in the world. ‘Role models are very important to project oneself into the future,’ she says. ‘I’m the first person to know too little about great women filmmakers from both the past and present. I knew the work of Dziga Vertov for years, for instance, before I found out that it was his wife, Elizaveta Svilova, who edited the films. Anyone can imagine the huge importance of editing for a film like Man with a Movie Camera. With a lack of role models to inspire you, you learn as a woman to be modest, to be obedient, to work hard,’ she continues. ‘You get used to the idea that you will work extremely hard to do something valuable, perhaps without much glory coming to you in the end, all of which sounds more like a documentary than a Hollywood movie.’

a man’s world Desert Haze

film school effect

While all of these women have used documentary as a conduit for their talents and interests, most of them honed their skills in film school. Many went to Ghent’s KASK, where there is no distinction made between feature and documentary filmmaking, and others went to Brussels’ RITS, where students have to make a choice to focus on one or the other. Part of the reason there are more women documentary filmmakers, they say, is that there are more women entering film schools.

‘We have several good film schools in Belgium, and that helps,’ admits Küpper. ‘A good film school hires teachers

De Ceulaer, meanwhile, studied film at the Sint-Lukas art academy in Brussels. ‘Making a documentary was part of the required tasks, so I did it, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

I discovered a medium in which the creative possibilities seemed endless.’

Still, according to Moon Blaisse, whose new film Maarten van Severen: Addicted to Every Possibility looks at the influences – both good and bad – of the late Flemish designer Maarten Van Severen on his four sons, there is some way to go. ‘In Flanders, there are several female directors,’ she says, ‘but in film school, there are still only like three girls amid 50 boys.’

And that kind of imbalance can lead to problems further on in one’s career. De Ceulaer is currently working with Benoot and Isabelle Tollenaere on a new documentary called California City. Recently at a pitch session at an international film festival, ‘we were very surprised that the reaction we got

‘The documentary scene is more conducive to finding a way into filmmaking for women. It’s less testosterone prone; there’s less ego involved. It’s an environement where women thrive’

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- Eva Küpper

a style to the substance

Maarten van Severen: Addicted to Every Possibility

many times was: “I’m not getting involved in a project with three female directors.” This reaction always came from men; it was definitely an issue for them. I wonder if this wouldn’t have been the case if we were three male directors.’

Küpper finds that her problems with gender politics have been on the production side of things rather than on the creative side. ‘I was in a situation where I had to negotiate a salary, and they really weren’t taking me seriously,’ she shares. ‘I knew that if I was 10 years older and a man, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Sometime you do feel that the business side of things is still very much a man’s world.’

‘harmless girls’

Blaisse has found herself in similar situations. ‘I experience problems when there are only men around, with editing, producing – there is something really dominant about that,’ she says. ‘There are some real differences about what works. There is really something more relaxed about working with women; there’s less pressure.’

For her part, Vermeulen finds the work/life balance exists for women in a wholly different way than it does for men. ‘So many young women are making films right now,’ she notes.

‘At documentary film festivals, there are lots of women, and I’m happy to see it. The only question is, will they keep on going, because lots of things happen after you enter your 30s. When there are meetings with filmmakers, for example, women are there with their babies, but you don’t see any men there with their babies.’

Stoops in fact was once replaced on a project on which she’d been working for two years because she got pregnant. ‘The insurance companies don’t insure pregnant women,’ she explains. ‘We’re uniting in a union for directors, and we’re certainly going to fight this.’

Interestingly, she continues, being female also comes with its advantages. ‘We can’t infiltrate in some cultures as easily as a man, but we also have advantages. In Venezuela, a female friend and I were seen as harmless girls, which got us much closer to interesting material.’

De Ceulaer says that people can indeed feel less threatened by a woman director telling their story. ‘We gain a lot of trust; they have faith in the project and enjoy getting into this adventure with us,’ she says. ‘I can’t say if this is because

In terms of subject matter, Flanders’ current crop of documentary filmmakers are so diverse, it’s impossible to find a common thread. But what is notable is the way each one chooses to tell the story. There is little narration and few facts. Mostly, the movie starts, and viewers have to navigate their way through it.

‘I enjoy films that leave a lot to the imagination,’ confirms De Ceulaer, who allows the subjects of her film about the management of California’s redwood forests to explain themselves and doesn’t interrupt with facts and figures.

‘I feel like this is a true kind of interactive cinema. It invites you to create your own story; the viewer gets an active role.

After screenings of Behind the Redwood Curtain, I got a lot of comments from people who saw different things in it, sometimes even views that I totally didn’t think of myself.’

This sentiment repeats over and over again among women filmmakers. Teck notes how some viewers of Feel My Love didn’t even realise that all the subjects had dementia. ‘Those are the greatest compliments I get,’ she smiles. ‘When you are in an environment where people have dementia, you cannot talk about yesterday or tomorrow; it’s very much about the here and now. And that’s how I wanted the film to be. There is no storyline; you are just taken through the days, the rituals, the seasons.’

‘It is really about offering something like a buffet,’ says Küpper, ‘where you have all these kinds of flavours and colours and scents, and you just let people create their own meal. I really like that, that no two people have the same experience of a film.’

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we are female, have a solid knowledge of our subject or just because we look young. Still now, six or seven years after graduation and 30 years old, we constantly get the question if this is a school project!’

no limits

And while documentary has worked out extremely well for these women, none of them shuts out the possibility of making fiction one day. ‘I don’t want to limit myself,’ explains Teck. ‘After I made Feel My Love, I thought I could also have made a very beautiful installation with those images.’

Stoops echoes many of the filmmakers when she explains that the form depends on the subject. ‘I have made audiovisual experiments out of my work in theatre, visual arts and work in public space. The subject mostly inspires the form or medium I use. I’m convinced that “form” communicates “content”.’

The big question regarding gender in documentary – or any other kind – of filmmaking is much harder to pinpoint: Is there a fundamental difference between films made by men and films made by women? ‘Like my mom said after she saw The Hurt Locker – she said it really takes a woman to get under our skin like that,’ says Küpper. ‘I think she’s right; it’s psychological, emotional. I mean, there is a difference, I’m sure. I just haven’t put my finger on it yet.’ 

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HOME ALONE

IN ROMANIA

HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF IN ROMANIA, SAYS TEODORA ANA MIHAI. WHEN MIHAI WAS A CHILD, HER PARENTS FLED THE CEAUȘESCU REGIME, LEAVING HER BEHIND UNTIL THEY COULD SETTLE AND SEND FOR HER. NOW KIDS ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND BECAUSE OF ECONOMIC MIGRATION, AS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CITIZENS LEAVE THE COUNTRY ANNUALLY TO WORK ABROAD. THEY ARE OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE ‘HOME ALONE GENERATION’. MIHAI’S AWARD-WINNING FILM WAITING FOR AUGUST SPENDS SEVERAL MONTHS IN THE LIFE OF ONE SUCH FAMILY. TEXT LISA BRADSHAW

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Waiting for August

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

The Halmac family live on the outskirts of Bacău, a mid-sized city in eastern Romania. Waiting for August introduces us to the family’s seven children, whose mother has already left for Italy, where she is a domestic worker. 17-year-old Ionut is the oldest, but it’s his younger sister Georgiana who’s in charge of the brood, cooking, cleaning and getting everyone off to school in the morning, including herself.

The stalwart Georgiana easily becomes the focus, as the camera follows her both in and outside the apartment while she negotiates a life hovering between adolescence and adulthood.

Waiting for August has enjoyed a tremendous debut, receiving both the Best International Feature award from Toronto’s Hot Docs and the Best Documentary Film from Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It also received a Special Mention at Visions du Réel in Switzerland earlier this year. It’s Mihai’s debut film and shares many parallels with her own life.

The writer/director was seven years old when her parents left Bucharest.

‘The proof that they would come back – that was me,’ explains Mihai, now 33. But to be safe, Mihai’s parents told her that they were going on vacation and would be back in two weeks. ‘I was in good hands with my aunt and uncle,’ she says, ‘but eventually I started asking questions, so they explained the situation to me as simply as they could and told me I couldn’t talk about it.’

Mihai’s parents got political asylum in Belgium. ‘Of course everyone in my family had to pretend they didn’t know anything about my parents’ plans because there could have been repercussions for them. International phone calls were monitored, so my parents had a code sentence that they used to let us know that they were able to stay in Belgium. They said “it’s beautiful, but it rains a lot”.’

Mihai was eventually reunited with her parents in Antwerp, where she still lives. But she in fact spent many formative teenage years in the United States, where the same aunt and uncle wound up after also fleeing Ceaușescu. ‘My parents wanted to give me the opportunity to study English and have an experience that would really broaden my horizons.’

She was there for her final two years of secondary school and was then accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, just outside of New York City, where she studied film. In her final year she won the prestigious Thomas J Watson Fellowship, which allowed her to travel throughout Europe and India to study Roma identity.

Mihai returned to Belgium to explore work opportunities at precisely the moment that her father was diagnosed with cancer. Her parents had divorced, and her mother was living back in Romania. Mihai helped take care of her father and younger brother.

Though she could relate to Georgiana in this small way, she mostly has strong feelings that harken further back in her life – about parents who have to leave and children who have to stay. ‘I made the movie because I felt like this story was repeating itself. My parents left for political reasons; now parents are leaving for economic ones. But the children are still being left behind. I thought it was time to talk about it.

It’s the story of so many families. I don’t know one Romanian family that doesn’t have anyone abroad. Someone is always somewhere else sending money back. It can break these families, and that is just really incredibly sad.’

Teodora Ana Mihai

the search for the perfect family

Still, it wasn’t easy for Mihai to find a family to base her documentary around. ‘It’s taboo to leave your children on their own, even though many people do it,’ she explains. To talk about it is already difficult, but to let it be filmed is a big step further. I was very, very lucky that this family understood that there was no reason to be ashamed, that only through steps like this will the situation change.’

What Mihai chose to leave out of the film is almost as interesting as what she leaves in. For instance, she shot scenes of the mother leaving for Italy but decided not to use them. ‘It was a very touching moment, but I soon realised that I had to leave it out and really focus on the kids. It was important to make the point that there is no adult there.’

Similarly, there is no mention of a father or where he might be. ‘That was a tough one,’ admits Mihai. ‘But in this case the father hasn’t been with them for six years, and they were used to it, used to not talking about his absence. So I chose not to force it. The important thing is that he’s not there and that they needed to move on and figure things out for themselves.’

And they do, with much greater success than anyone might imagine. Yes, the kids often stay up too late, and indeed, they do things Mum probably wouldn’t allow, such as swing on the doors and play with knives. Ionut appears to spend the entire eight months playing computer games. But when the mother returns, they are all safe and sound.

And that’s thanks to Georgiana, who, at 15, plays mother and housewife, mentor and big sister, all wrapped into one.

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reunited in Flanders

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‘When the mother left,’ explains Mihai, ‘she delegates to Georgiana specifically her responsibilities in her absence. It’s true, her older brother was in a computer phase, but also, nothing was delegated to him.’

It’s also not a new situation for Georgiana or the other kids.

It’s not the first time – nor will it be the last – that the mother must leave the country to make enough money to support them. Previously, a caregiver was hired to help, but the whole family found her inadequate, so this time around, they decided to take care of themselves.

Koreeda and Kieslowski

Although Mihai became interested in cinema in secondary school, particularly through an art and cinema club let by San Francisco based artist Ronald Chase, it was even earlier that her interest in the arts was peaked: Her father was a keen photographer. ‘He wanted to become a photographer or even a filmmaker,’ explains Mihai, ‘but under the regime he feared he would end up having to make propaganda, so he ended up taking an office job. But he did photography as a hobby; his passion for it was intact.’

Later, two filmmakers in particular would inspire her to explore the seemingly endless boundaries of documentary filmmaking. ‘I grew up admiring the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski; without a doubt, he had an influence on me,’ she says. ‘He made many documentaries at the beginning of his career, and you can see documentary affinities later in the way he lets you observe his characters and in the pace of his films. It’s very beautiful how he takes the time to let you see things. Really, his films are a never-ending learning source for me.’

Nobody Knows, the 2004 film by contemporary Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda, is fiction, but, points out Mihai, ‘it is inspired by true events, and Koreeda’s approach felt very documentary-like to me. I really like how he plays with the border between documentary and fiction. As you can already see from the style and approach of Waiting for August, I find that border extremely fertile and interesting in terms of experimentation.’

It’s definitely a method she will use on her next project, she says, which she is in Mexico working on now. ‘It’s about teenage orphans in a very dangerous zone of Tamaulipas.

It’s home to a drugs cartel, and the residents live with violence every day. Lots of kids have lost their parents, who either got mixed up with the wrong people or were collateral damage.’ 

reel women

‘My parents left for political reasons; now parents are leaving for economic ones.

But the children are still being left behind’

Waiting for August

Waiting For August on flandersimage.com

SAYING THANKS Teodora Ana Mihai is, as are so many documentary filmmakers, still busy with her last project, too. The story of Waiting for August hasn’t ended just because the film’s finished. She brought Georgiana to visit her in Belgium and took her to Paris. ‘I just wanted to thank her,’ she says. ‘I wanted to give her an opportunity to be able to do something she would not otherwise be able to do.’

She’s organised a holiday at the seaside for the whole family earlier on this year. ‘I decided that I wanted to spend part of my prize money from Hot Docs with the family,’ she explains, ‘and the little ones have never seen the sea. They’ve never been outside of their neighbourhood, actually. Everything is an adventure for them.’

© Ionut Dobre

A MAN WITH A PLAN TEXT IAN MUNDELL

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

ROEL MONDELAERS SET HIMSELF A CHALLENGE: TO MAKE A FILM IN THE AMERICAN ROM-COM TRADITION, BUT WHICH SPEAKS TO FLEMISH SENSIBILITIES. THE RESULT IS PLAN BART, A TALE OF LOVE, LIFE CHOICES AND THE TICKING BIOLOGICAL CLOCK. Mondelaers’ motivation to make Plan Bart came from two different places. First of all, he was impressed by fresh approaches to romantic comedy coming out of the USA. Films such as Knocked Up, Juno and (500) Days of Summer all suggested new possibilities. ‘These are classic stories, told in a completely fresh and personal way, which was very appealing,’ he recalls.

Then, he went to a barbecue. ‘A friend of mine, Sarah, had broken up with her boyfriend of 10 years, and she was really sad. She said: “How am I ever going to have babies if I don’t even have a man?” Then another friend, Bart, said: “Don’t worry, if you are 35 and you don’t have a boyfriend, I’ll knock you up!” Everyone laughed, but I went home and thought, this could be a great script.’

At the time Mondelaers and his writing partner Hans Van Nuffel (the director of Oxygen) were stuck on another project, so they decided to take a break and kick this new idea around for a week. ‘Actually it was the first time we had looked at our age group through the writer’s glasses.

We discovered lots of funny stuff, and a lot of potential for interesting scenes. We instantly felt that we were onto something interesting.’

a real theme

24

In the story they came up with, Sarah leaves her boyfriend Alex when he reluctantly admits that he does not want to start a family. A chance encounter with Bart, an old friend who only cares for easy living and playing air guitar, gives her an alternative. He agrees to impregnate her and walk away, in exchange for enough money to fly him to an air guitar championship in Japan. But fulfilling their contract is not as straightforward as it seems.

Turning this story into a rom-com would also be far from straightforward. ‘If you look at American rom-coms they are all larger than life, and that doesn’t work with Flemish people. We are very down to earth,’ Mondelaers explains.

‘So the challenge was to tell a story that is romantic, that delivers what you expect from the genre, and at the same time not fall into the trap of being too sweet or unbelievable for our audience.’

It was also important to Mondelaers that the film should have a real theme. ‘I wanted it to be about something, and more than just boy meets girl.’ Yet in choosing pregnancy as a plot device, he did not want the film to become pro-family propaganda. ‘I wrote it when my wife was pregnant, and I found that I was pretty scared of the responsibility coming my way,’ he explains. ‘And I discovered a lot of friends had the same feelings, not necessarily about having children but buying an apartment or choosing the right job. So the movie is about taking responsibility in life, whether you want it or not. Sometimes you have to jump, even if you can’t predict the outcome.’

getting the chemistry right

With the script honed, and Caviar on board as producer, the next step was the casting. ‘Getting the chemistry right was like a puzzle. With Wine Dierickx, as soon as I saw her audition, I knew that she should be Sarah,’ Mondelaers says. Dierickx also has history with romantic comedy, thanks to films such as Madly in Love, along with credits such as Felix van Groeningen’s With Friends Like These.

‘Then I had to find the two guys. They had to be opposites, but at the same time not so clichéd that you don’t believe in them or don’t root for them.’

inter view ‘The challenge was

to tell a story that is romantic, that delivers what you expect from the genre, and at the same time not fall into the trap of being too sweet or unbelievable for our audience’

25

BART’S SOLO If Sarah’s desire for a child is easy to understand, Bart’s interest in their contract is more obscure. He wants the money in order to attend an air guitar competition in Japan. ‘Bart is someone who thinks that society is focused too much on results,’ Mondelaers explains. ‘Having him put a lot of time into something that is not even a real guitar was perfect for the character.’

For actor Jeroen Perceval, this meant grasping the air guitar in both hands and learning to play. ‘Once we had the songs, I took them to a guitar teacher. He practiced them with Jeroen on a real guitar, and then we took the guitar away.’ Luckily the art of the air guitar is not exact.

‘There aren’t so many really good air guitar players, so we had some margin,’ Mondelaers says, ‘but I still think he does it very well in the film.’

All stills Plan Bart

26

Bart is someone who takes no responsibility in life, yet he has to be likeable. This balancing act fell to Jeroen Perceval (With Friends Like These, Bullhead). ‘I think Jeroen is very charismatic, but he is not a conventional romantic lead, like Hugh Grant or Bradley Cooper. He’s a bit off-beat. So when I saw him perform, I was struck by how he managed to make this character so honest.’

Alex is also a challenging role. ‘He’s the ‘bad guy’ and it would be very easy to make him so unlikeable that, from the first moment you see him, you just don’t like him and you don’t want Sarah to be with him any more.’

Wouter Hendrickx (The Misfortunates, The Verdict) initially auditioned for Bart, but with Perceval pencilled in Mondelaers asked him to switch. ‘I knew he was a strong enough actor,

and in combination with Wine and Jeroen I thought that might be very powerful.’ The cast was completed with Mourade Zeguendi (Offline, Les Barons), as Bart’s long-suffering flatmate Abbi, and Eva Van Der Gucht (Everybody Famous!, North Sea Texas) as Sarah’s best friend Eva.

fresh and vivid

Throughout the casting process and on into filming there was a continuing tension between the demands of the rom-com genre and Mondelaers’ desire to make a more personal film with real drama. ‘The actors needed to have comic timing, because there is a lot of comedy in the film, but at the same time they had to be moving in the dramatic scenes,’ he says.

‘So we were constantly searching for ways to make these

Roel Mondelaers is a prolific writer, both for film and television. He devised, co-wrote and directed the drama series De Vijfhoek for Flemish public broadcaster Eén and was part of the writers’ room for comedy series Connie and Clyde. He also co-wrote the forthcoming horror film Cub, with its director Jonas Govaerts.

As a writer, he likes company. Hans Van Nuffel, who he has known since the RITS film school in Brussels, was a natural choice. ‘We are very good friends, and like a lot of the same movies, so the working process is very organic.’ Van Nuffel is also a director, making his feature debut in 2010 with Oxygen.

The collaborative process changes from project to project. For Plan Bart, they developed the story together and then Mondelaers wrote the screenplay, with Van Nuffel coming in to brainstorm any difficulties. Their next script, for an animated sci-fi feature about a runaway robot, was written by passing drafts back and forth.

Meanwhile Mondelaers is also writing a drama with Vanja d’Alcantara, director of Beyond the Steppes.

‘That should all be done before the end of the year, then I hope to work again with Hans on a new script,’ he says. ‘That will be something different. I would love to make a thriller. I have a few ideas, but I have yet to choose which one to start working on.’

inter view

THE WRITERS’ ROOM

Plan Bart on flandersimage.com characters as realistic as possible without losing the comedy.’

With Philip van Volsem (The Hunger, A Christmoose Story), the director of photography, he looked for ways to escape the bright look of American rom-coms. ‘I didn’t want the feeling that the sets were over-lit or that we used extra lighting.

But at the same time I wanted it to be fresh and vivid and have a comedy touch to it,’ he explains. Eventually this was achieved by mainly using rice-paper lamps. ‘Placed very close to the actors’ faces, you get a very soft feel to the images.’

The music, composed by Raf Keunen (Bullhead, Death of a Shadow), also treads a fine line between guitar pop and a classic, orchestral score. ‘I wanted to have a contemporary feel, but at the same time the music had to follow the emotions, so I couldn’t just do it with pop music. I knew

I needed the classic score, but I didn’t want it to become too conventional.’

The search for balance was still going on after the shoot.

‘The further I got in the editing process, the more I discovered that I shouldn’t try to escape the genre,’ he says. ‘I wanted to marry comedy and drama, but in the end I think there is more comedy.’

And although Plan Bart was inspired by Mondelaers’ friends, he should still be able to look them in the eye now that the film is complete. ‘None of the characters is based on a real person,’ he says. ‘It started with the anecdote of Bart and Sarah, and I kept the names, but the characters are completely different. I don’t think anyone will be insulted.

Although I did borrow some dialogue...’ 

27

Photo by Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times Contour by Getty Images

Cliff Martinez 25 OCT 2O14

Kuipke Ghent, Belgium

14th WSA Ceremony #ffgent #WSAwards

FRANCIS LAI, DAN ROMER & JEF NEVE BRUSSELS PHILHARMONIC CONDUCTED BY DIRK BROSSÉ

www.blauwepeer.be

www.filmfestival.be www.worldsoundtrackawards.com

EDith KiEL JAn VAnDERhEYDEn

and Flemish popular cinema

a new publication by cinematek that focuses on the forgotten founders of the sound film in Flanders. the book Edith Kiel en Jan Vanderheyden, pioniers van de Vlaamse film (available in dutch only) by historians Roel vande winkel en dirk van engeland sheds new light on the life and work of this couple of filmmakers. the book is accompanied by a double dvd (also available separately) which contains their first and most successful box office success: De Witte (whitey, 1934). also on the dvd: the romantic operetta Alleen voor U (only for you, 1935) and Schipperskwartier (the Sailors Quarter, 1953), their most important post-war success.

Royal Belgian Film aRchive Book + douBle dvd: € 29 / douBle dvd: €19

availaBle on www.cinematek.Be

GETTING INTO THE GAME TEXT IAN MUNDELL

38

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, IS A FAMILY FILM THAT COMBINES REAL WORLD ADVENTURE WITH THE FANTASY OF COMPUTER GAMES. EVIDENTLY THAT MAKES IT A BIT LARGER THAN LIFE, WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW DIRECTOR DOUGLAS BOSWELL LIKES IT. HE GREW UP LOVING HOLLYWOOD ADVENTURE MOVIES SUCH AS STAR WARS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK AND

inter view

LABYRINTHUS, WHICH RECEIVED ITS INTERNATIONAL ROLLOUT AT THIS YEAR’S

THE GOONIES. BUT WHEN HE WENT TO FILM SCHOOL HE FOUND THAT THIS KIND OF CINEMA WAS FROWNED UPON. ‘I LEARNED NOT TO TALK ABOUT SPIELBERG,’ HE RECALLS. ‘EVERY TIME I SAID HIS NAME, DOORS CLOSED.’ It was the same after graduation, when Boswell started to pitch short movies. ‘I wrote several of them - science fiction, fantasy - but I didn’t get the money. They were too big, too loud.’ So he decided to learn his trade on quieter subjects.

His short film Romance, about three old ladies dreaming of lost love in a rest home, was a success with international festivals and allowed his career to move forward, both in film and television.

Working as first assistant director on Hans Herbots’ 2005 film Long Weekend, Boswell told screenwriter Pierre De Clercq about his frustrated desire to do something sensational.

De Clercq sympathised, and dug out a treatment he had written for an adventure movie. ‘And that was the beginning of Labyrinthus,’ the director recalls.

The story involves a 14-year-old boy, Frikke, who finds a mysterious box in the street with a USB stick attached.

When he plugs the stick into his computer a game starts up, inviting him to play. He also discovers that the box is a camera, and that anything he photographs will appear in the game.

This seems like fun, until Frikke photographs his sister’s cat.

When it appears in the game, in real life it falls into a coma.

‘That moment of seriousness, realising that it is a game of life and death... I was shocked,’ Boswell says, ‘but I realised that it went very deep. That’s when I thought: this is the movie I want to make.’

Frikke goes on to discover that a girl, Nola, is trapped in the game. The only way to save her from Pekk, the masked man stalking the game’s labyrinth, is to carry on playing and find a way out. But at the same time, Frikke resolves to track down the owner of the box and find out who is controlling the game.

computer generated imagery

While being able to get funding to take the project forward, they still had to work out how to create the virtual world of the game on a relatively modest budget. They did not want to copy an existing game, and most of the natural locations

they might use – forests, ruins, caves – had already been done. ‘That’s when we came up with a paper world,’ Boswell says. ‘As far as I know, there is no game set in a paper world.’

At first they thought of building their paper world in a studio, but this proved impractical. Then, with computer generated imagery (CGI) becoming cheaper and easier to produce, the team started to look at how a mixture of reality and CGI might work.

An important contributor to this process was Reinier van Brummelen (Eisenstein in Guanajuato, Walking to Paris), the film’s Director of Photography, who has a long experience working with digital effects, for example in the films of Peter Greenaway. ‘He helped us develop ways of putting the actors into the CGI sets,’ Boswell says.

He also came up with a novel way of producing the sweeping camera movements that suggest they are in a game environment. The actors walk on a treadmill, mounted on a turntable in front of the green screen required to create the special effects. Combined with the tracking of the camera, this gives endless possibilities. ‘We could make great camera movements around them, or from behind them to the front, without any problems or covering the whole studio with green screen, which would have been expensive.’

The paper world, with its newspaper canyons, cardboard box tunnels and streets of playing cards, was created in collaboration with The Fridge, a special effects company in Brussels. ‘It was not the work of one guy, but the results of sticking our heads together and allow different people to work on each other’s ideas.’

puppeteer

The young actors Boswell cast all had some experience, but working with so many special effects was still a challenge.

Spencer Bogaert, who plays Frikke, has long scenes where he is meant to be interacting with the game, which had not yet been created when the scenes were shot. ‘He spent three days talking to a blank computer screen,’ Boswell

39

‘ET is a kids’ movie and it is very scary, a lot scarier than our movie. But kids love being scared, and you need to have that to make the feelgood moments work. It has to be scary to get the relief at the end when the characters make it’

All stills Labyrinthus

recalls. ‘But he liked those days the most because it was so intimate, just him, me and the cameraman.’

Emma Verlinden, who plays Nola, faced an even greater challenge. Her character is trapped in the game, so she has to react to her environment and interact with Frikke’s avatar, a crumpled paper hat that flies around her. To make this easier, Boswell brought in a puppeteer who operated a

PL AYING THE CIT Y

40

As well as being about a game, Labyrinthus has become a game. Not a computer game, but a game that takes place around Ghent, the city where the film was shot. Teams of young people are given a smartphone, which they use to navigate through the city and complete a challenge with photographs, audio clips and other forms of ‘augmented reality’.

As well as following their own progress on the smartphone’s digital map, teams can see and interact with others playing at the same time. Whoever solves their puzzle first, with the most points, wins.

The game was inspired by the film rather than being developed at the same time. Director Douglas Boswell was not involved, but happily went along with his young cast to play it as a team. ‘We didn’t win,’ he admits. ‘We came seventh...’

Even so, the experience was positive. ‘I think this is fantastic. It’s great how ideas and stories find their own way and live on outside the movie.’

green paper hat that Verlinden could act with. The puppeteer also wore a wristwatch with a loudspeaker, which was used to relay Frikke’s lines, provided by Bogaert acting off-stage.

‘I had fun puzzling my way through this, finding ways to make it nicer for the actors and to improve their performances,’ Boswell says. But on the whole they rose to the challenge.

‘Children have imagination, and once they get used to each other, they just have fun.’

The other child actors are Felix Maesschalck (Allez Eddy!, Time of My Life), Pommelien Thijs and Nell Cattrysse (The Broken Circle Breakdown, The Verdict). Meanwhile the main adult roles are taken by Pepijn Caudron (Cut Loose), Tine Embrechts (Brasserie Romantique, Turquaze) and Herwig Ilegems (Halfway, Germaine).

On the night when Labyrinthus had its world premiere, Douglas Boswell made a confession to his cast. When the film had been shown to a young test audience, the kids didn’t seem to be the only stars of the show. Test audiences fell for... Pickles, the dog.

Initially just Frikke’s shaggy pet, Pickles plays an increasingly important role in the film. Some of the scenes called for by the script had the crew shaking their heads in disbelief. But Boswell had confidence in animal trainer Walter Verhoeven.

‘We had already done a pilot of a series for Eyeworks about five dogs, a cat and a goldfish. We shot for two or three days, and all the dogs worked together. We even had a scene with all the animals in one meeting! So we knew how to make it work.’

Verhoeven said he could find several dogs who might be able to do what was required of Pickles, but he was absolutely confident that his own dog could do it. If he was right for the part. ‘He sent me a picture, and I thought: That’s a great dog!’ And as promised, the performance was spot-on. ‘It was very easy. When Walter says it’s no problem, then it’s no problem.’

douglasboswell.com

scarier elements

Labyrinthus is also a film that unfolds in a real city, which is worked into the plot. Ghent provides a range of atmospheric settings, from canals and parks to the spooky, mazelike Groot Begijnhof in the suburb of Sint-Amandsberg.

‘I wanted to have water and trees,’ Boswell explains.

‘Nature is very important to make the exteriors breathable, countering the game, which feels artificial.’

The target audience for Labyrinthus is children aged 9-12, with the hope that it might also draw in those who are slightly older. This meant striking a balance between the notion of what is ‘safe’ for kids and the story’s scarier elements.

Thinking about this, Boswell goes back to his hero, Steven Spielberg. ‘ET is a kids’ movie and it is very scary, a lot

inter view

ANIMAL MAGIC

Labyrinthus on flandersimage.com

scarier than our movie,’ he says. ‘But kids love being scared, and you need to have that to make the feel-good moments work. It has to be scary to get the relief at the end when the characters make it.’

Boswell is not sure what his next project will be, only that it will be different from Labyrinthus. He is particularly encouraged by the way film production in Flanders is opening up, for instance with Jonas Govaerts’ horror movie Cub and Vincent Bal’s musical Belgian Rhapsody. ‘I hope that those films are great successes, because it opens up possibilities for more genres to be explored here in Belgium.

I don’t want to have to go to America, like they told me in film school, I want to make that kind of films here.’ 

41

SING YOUR HEART OUT AFTER SEVERAL YEARS WORKING ABROAD, VINCENT BAL RETURNS TO BELGIUM FOR BELGIAN RHAPSODY, A ROMEO-AND-JULIET STORY ACROSS THE COUNTRY’S LINGUISTIC DIVIDE. IT MAY ALSO BE FLANDERS’ FIRST EVER MUSICAL COMEDY. TEXT IAN MUNDELL

42

Bal went to film school and made his first feature, Man of Steel, in Belgium, but then went to work in the Netherlands. He gave Carice van Houten an early role in the popular kids’ film Miss Minoes (2001) then made the international family film The Zigzag Kid (2012) with Isabella Rossellini and Burghart Klaußner. In between, he worked on TV series such as Kika and Bob and devised other film projects.

The idea for Belgian Rhapsody (the original title, Brabançonne, refers to Belgium’s national anthem) dates back to 2008, when Bal met producer Peter Bouckaert on the set of Cut Loose. ‘He asked me what kind of film I’d really like to make, and I said: a musical comedy. I had this idea in mind of doing a musical comedy with existing songs from pop culture here in Belgium.’ Bouckaert liked the idea and suggested setting the story across the country’s two language communities: the Dutchspeaking Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons.

‘I made him a CD with songs I thought would fit in the film,’ Bal recalls. ‘He listened to it in the car and texted me: Wow! I just listened to your movie and I really liked it!’

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

To develop the story, Bal was paired with Pierre De Clercq (Hasta la vista/Come As You Are, Halfway, Labyrinthus).

It was De Clercq who suggested setting the story in the world of amateur concert bands. ‘That sounded like a good idea, not to make it about politics but about two musical tribes on either side of the country. And it also helped to bring out the music in the film.’

The intrigue they came up with concerns rival concert bands, competing for a place representing Belgium in a European competition. The Walloon band, En Avant, has an amazing trumpet player in Hugues, but during the final his Flemish counterpart Willy plays his heart out. Literally.

He expires on stage, and the result is a draw.

Both bands go through to the European competition, but without Willy the Flemish band, Sint-Cecilia, is now at a severe disadvantage. But Hugues has quarrelled with the Walloon band leader, who refuses to use his compositions for the coming competition. Elke, the daughter of the Flemish band leader, hears about this and uses it to tempt Hugues to change sides. That is when tensions start to grow between the bands,

inter view ‘For Belgian Rhapsody I tried to change the way I direct. I did practically no storyboarding, then we looked on set at how we were going to do things’

43

44

and feelings start to develop between Elke and Hugues.

‘We try to make fun of both parties involved, to play with the clichés, but at the same time we show real people,’ Bal explains. ‘It’s not about caricatures.’

‘Amaryllis Uitterlinden is a fantastic singer. When she came in for the casting everyone sitting there had goose bumps,’ Bal recalls. ‘She has acted before, but not in this kind of role, and I think she pulled it off very well.’

lyrics that fitted the story

a pianist on the set

As well as spending time with real concert bands while they were developing the film, Bal and De Clercq also watched a lot of musicals. They were looking for good examples to follow, but also of traps to avoid. ‘We didn’t like it when the song stops the story, when somebody has lived through something and then sings a song to tell us: I lived through something! That gets kind of boring.’

Instead he wanted the transitions to appear more natural.

‘When the emotions get too strong, people start singing instead of carrying on talking.’

Since they planned to use existing songs, this put additional demands on the selection. ‘We had to find lyrics that really fitted the story, that kept the story moving, and where we could use them, if possible, as dialogue between people.’

They were inspired by Dennis Potter’s TV series The Singing Detective, Alain Resnais’ On connait la chanson and Christophe Honoré’s Les chansons d’amour, which Bal particularly admired for its realism. This was something he wanted to achieve in Belgian Rhapsody. ‘You have to believe that people start singing, but at the same time we wanted to keep it realistic and be in that world of concert bands.’

He was also inspired by the golden age of Hollywood.

‘Mamma Mia is a lot of fun, but everyone looks like they have taken speed or something. In the old Fred Astaire films it’s much more natural. There’s something sophisticated about them that I like very much.’

From the outset he decided that the leading roles needed to be actors who could sing a little bit rather than singers who could act a little bit. Casting Elke, he got something more.

For Hugues, Bal was struck by the French actor Arthur Dupont, who had played one of the leads in the recent Walloon comedy Mobile Home. Dupont’s agent was reluctant to put him in another musical comedy, but Bal found a way to get to him - not unlike Elke in the script.

While serving on a film festival jury, Dupont had said how much he loved Come As You Are. ‘When we said Belgian Rhapsody was from the same writer, that made him read the script. He liked it and agreed to do the audition.’

Amaryllis and Arthur were good enough singers to perform some of their parts live on set, take after take, but in most instances the cast re-recorded their songs in the studio.

‘They are not all the best singers in the world, but sometimes that helps to make it feel more real. It adds to the charm that they are not trained singers.’

The actors were accompanied by musical director Steve Willaert. ‘He was at all the casting sessions, with a little piano, and played along with the scenes, a bit like silent movies,’ Bal says. ‘That was a great experience. I would always like to have a pianist on the set, it works so well for the actors.’ Willaert was also involved in adapting songs and writing original pieces for the bands.

Director of photography Danny Elsen (Loft, Time of My Life) was an old friend, with whom Bal had worked on commercials. ‘He’s very versatile and he’s very fast. We had 37 days of shooting, which is not so few, but with these songs you need a lot of time.’

Elsen was also in tune with Bal’s desire to find a looser, more realistic style than in his previous films. ‘The Zigzag Kid was like a puzzle, very storyboarded and very precise.

contribution. ‘It took us some time to convince them, but they gave money. And I’m glad they did, because it would have been awkward to make a film that is so quintessentially Belgian without their support.’

what’s next?

As for the film’s international prospects, the main question is whether people will identify with the songs. Apart perhaps from 'Ça plane pour moi', an international hit in the 1970s for Plastic Bertrand, most will be unfamiliar. ‘I’m curious to see how this film will play with an international audience,’ Bal says. ‘When we see it we know the songs, so to see them in another context is fun and sometimes touching.

But I think they are powerful enough as they are.’

Another open question is what Bal will do next.

inter view

For Belgian Rhapsody I tried to change the way I direct.

I did practically no storyboarding, then we looked on set at how we were going to do things.’

Together with set designer Gert Stas (The Spiral, My Queen Karo) they also looked for ways to define the two communities in visual terms. For Flanders this meant looking for the region’s characteristic red brick buildings and more evident signs of wealth. For Wallonia it was about finding older buildings, in natural stone, with a shabby charm.

The two opposing villages in the film are composites, made up of various locations in Flanders and Luxembourg.

This substitution was necessary to satisfy the conditions of Luxembourg co-funding for the film. Belgium’s Frenchspeaking community eventually came on board, but as a minority co-production it could not make a substantial

All stills Belgian Rhapsody

BANDING TOGE THER Vincent Bal knew relatively little about concert bands when he started to work on Belgian Rhapsody, so he sat in on some rehearsals by way of research. ‘You have people of all ages and all sorts of professions coming together in a town and making music together,’ he explains. ‘They are not professionals. It’s not perfect, but it has heart and soul. It was quite touching at times.’

As inspiring as this was, he could not simply transplant one or two bands into his film. ‘These people rehearse at the weekend and work during the week, so it was impossible to use real bands. So we put out ads and formed two new bands.’

This was done with a mix of musicians and actors from Flanders and Luxembourg. But the concert band passion came naturally. ‘For many of them it was their first experience of shooting a film, but they became so involved and so supportive of the film. It was a very uplifting experience.’

After The Zigzag Kid and Belgian Rhapsody he is starting with a clean slate. ‘I believe in chance. You have to be able to say yes to the opportunities.’

One option would be to try a new genre. ‘I’d really love to do something like an Agatha Christie style thriller, because it would be very moody. I would also like to do something that is 100% comedy, but I think that’s very hard.’ He would also be happy to return to family films. ‘It’s a genre that I like, because it gives you the opportunity to do original and entertaining things.’  vincentbal.be Belgian Rhapsody on flandersimage.com

VINCENT BAL (°1971)* (2014) (2012) (2008) (2001) (1999)

– – – – –

BELGIAN RHAPSODY THE ZIGZAG KID KIKA & BOB (ANIMATED SERIES) MISS MINOES MAN OF STEEL

* selected filmography

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PRODUCING THE

FUTURE

TEXT IAN MUNDELL

PORTRAIT JO VOETS

PETER DE MAEGD SEES HIMSELF AS AN ENTREPRENEUR AS MUCH AS A PRODUCER. ‘THE FOCUS OF ANYTHING WE DO IS ABOUT CONNECTING THE POTENTIAL OF THE INTERNET TO TRADITIONAL FORMATS OF FILM AND TELEVISION,’ HE SAYS OF HIS COMPANY POTEMKINO. ‘AND THE WAY WE DO THAT IS TO BE INNOVATIVE AND TO THINK INTERNATIONALLY.’ HIS MOST RECENT PRODUCTION, JONAS GOVAERTS’ FEATURE DEBUT CUB, RECEIVED ITS WORLD PREMIÈRE IN TORONTO.

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De Maegd’s introduction to the power of the internet came after several years working as a producer. Through Potemkino he had produced Dimitri Karakatsanis’ Small Gods, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2007, while for Caviar he had worked as freelance line producer on Left Bank and Dirty Mind, both by Pieter Van Hees.

Then he picked up a project called Where is Gary? This was a ‘participative documentary’ in which Jean-Baptiste Dumont planned to use the internet and social media to track down Gary, a con man working in train stations across Europe. ‘It was one of the most exciting projects that we’ve ever done,’ De Maegd recalls. ‘It was a leap into the unknown, but then it came up with this amazing story. That was the moment when we felt: ok, so this is the potential of the internet.’

paradigm shift

Two further series with Dumont followed, Jean Becomes Flemish and Jean Saves Europe, both building on ideas about how the internet and documentary filmmaking could be combined, this time in a more satirical style. Then came The Spiral, an ambitious project for Caviar that combined TV drama with the creation of an extensive story universe online and real-life events in which people could participate.

The narrative across all these media involved an act of political and cultural provocation, in which a group of artists plot to steal six European masterpieces and set up a global scavenger hunt to recover them. Seven broadcasters took part in the project, with the drama reaching more than 2.5 million viewers in September 2012.

‘I think that what we did with The Spiral was really a paradigm

bizz

‘I felt from the start that Cub had potential on the international market’

shift,’ De Maegd says. ‘First of all, we pushed the suspension of disbelief beyond the borders of the TV screen into the online universe and reality, with live-action role play and events. Secondly, you really had a connection between what was happening in the community and what was happening in the TV series, without that interaction damaging the quality of the TV series and its narrative. That’s an extremely difficult balance to find.’

And while judging it a success, De Maegd is still mulling over the things that could have been done differently. ‘The Spiral was like visiting a possible future – no-one knows how the future will be, but this is how it could be,’ he says. ‘But more importantly, when you work on such an innovative project for converged media you really see the troubles that lie ahead.

Now, as a producer, but mainly as an entrepreneur, I’m focusing on those challenges and how I can anticipate them.’

audience connection

The fruit of this reflection can be seen in Cub, the debut feature of Jonas Govaerts. The film involves a group of cub scouts who go camping with their leaders, themselves no more than teenagers. Moved on from the campsite they planned to use, they venture deeper into the woods, where they soon find events taking a sinister turn. Elaborate traps have been set and there is something, or someone, moving in the undergrowth.

De Maegd was impressed by both the story and the clarity of the project. ‘From the start it was very clear what kind of movie we were going to make: a good movie, with a very strong story around the characters and their development,

Cub

47

THE BARON’S UNIVERSE Potemkino’s next project is The Baron, an animated TV series and online game inspired by the outrageous adventures of Baron Münchhausen. The idea has been developed by director Hans Vercauter, who was inspired to look into transmedia storytelling by the intuitive way his young daughter was playing with the iPad. The story, on both platforms, involves the Baron and his horse trying to make their way home to Münchhausen from an island where they have been stranded. ‘We are building a whole 3D universe, because we can use those assets both for the game and the TV series,’ De Maegd explains. ‘When we start talking with broadcasters, they appreciate that this is a product initiated with the vision of travelling from one platform to another, with the same look and feel, the same universe, the same characters.’

Vercauter is the project’s show runner, with animation expertise coming from Udo Beissel, working out of Hamburg. Flemish kids’ broadcaster Ketnet is on board, and De Maegd is now looking for a broadcast partner in a major territory. ‘Once we have that, it is full speed ahead.’

48

but within the horror genre. That’s why we refer to the movie as an adventure-horror, because it is more than just a horror story.’ His initial innovation in producing Cub did not involve the internet or new media. ‘I felt from the start that the film had potential on the international market, so I looked for a partner who could bring that expertise and experience to the table.’ He chose executive producer Louis Tisné, who in turn helped attract sales agent Grégoire Melin, of Kinology, to the project. ‘Grégoire really helped us get this project to a higher level of budget. That’s the exciting thing for this project, that we had the means to meet our vision.’

Meanwhile, De Maegd was thinking about how to start building a connection with the film’s potential audience.

First came a presence on social media such as Facebook, then the idea of mounting a crowd funding campaign. This required a carefully considered pitch. ‘You’re not going to ask for €20 for a film with a budget above €2 million. It doesn’t feel right. So we came up with the idea of crowd funding the traps. We used the slogan: “Buy a Trap, Kill a Cub”. And that worked really well.’

The target he set was €34,567 – the budget for constructing the traps – and eventually this was surpassed by €1,000.

Out of the 95 investors, 70 gave between €20 and €100, a common amount for such campaigns. ‘If they contribute, people want to give something that is valuable enough for the project but doesn’t hurt them financially. The price of a

bizz

dinner, for example.’ But then a few investors reached a little deeper into their pockets. ‘It’s about critical mass. You need those 70 people to find the one who puts up more than €10,000.’

But crowd funding is not just about the money. ‘One return was the cash, and it was really satisfying to succeed in that,’ De Maegd explains, ‘but you also build a conversation with your audience, you build a buzz.’

potemkino.com

heartbeat

The next step in building that momentum was to launch a series of games based on characters and situations in the film. One is an online memory game, where players have to find the cubs within a certain time before the poacher puts them in his traps.

Another game was designed to be played in real life, in the forest at night, for instance during actual scout camps.

This was launched in collaboration with the Belgian scout movement. ‘The idea is not that the game is played by thousands of people, but that it is played by the right people,’ De Maegd says. ‘You give a heartbeat to this community by giving it these special things.’

The Cub campaign will also make use of mobile phone apps, but De Maegd’s experience has taught him to be wary.

‘Sometimes you can get carried away by the technology,’ he says. Plans for a really innovative second screen experience, where people would download an app to use while watching the film, were reluctantly set aside. ‘We need to explain it too much for people to enjoy it. Maybe only a couple of dozen people will really understand what we are doing.’

Instead he will concentrate on crowd sourcing, combined with a new technology to boost the impact in the social media. ‘We need to work on simple ideas, simple calls to action where we can really use our community and work with them to get the best out of the movie.’ 

CRE ATIVE CO-PRODUCTION

Jean Saves Europe on flandersimage.com Cub on flandersimage.com

The Spiral

Jean Saves Europe

Peter De Maegd is an active co-producer, using Potemkino to get involved in projects where he feels a creative connection. These range from Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato, about the great Russian director’s attempt to make a film in Mexico, to Wolfgang Becker’s Me & Kaminski, about a journalist trying to write a biography of a reclusive blind painter.

Then there is Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s Moonwalkers, a comedy that delves into the conspiracy theory that Stanley Kubrick was once approached to fake a film of astronauts landing on the Moon. Shot in Belgium, the cast includes Ron Perlman and Rupert Grint.

‘It’s really great to have this diversity of projects,’ says De Maegd, ‘but they all have one thing in common: they are all movies that I would love to see myself. I’m not co-producing movies because I have to.’

Sometimes he knows that his role is to take a back seat, but if possible he likes to bring something constructive to each project. For example it was the Potemkino connection that resulted in Elmer Bäck being cast as the lead in Eisenstein in Guanajuato, after playing one of the artists in The Spiral. That in turn brought in a co-producer from Finland, the actor’s home country.

49

under the influence

SAHIM OMAR KALIFA TRACES HIS URGE TO MAKE FILMS BACK TO PHOTOGRAPHING HIS NEIGHBOURS AT HOME IN IRAQI KURDISTAN, SUPPLEMENTING HIS CHILDHOOD ALLOWANCE BY THREE DINARS A TIME. LATER HE GOT HOLD OF A VIDEO CAMERA AND REMADE SCENES FROM MOVIES WITH HIS BROTHERS AND COUSINS. ‘TWENTY YEARS LATER, AT SINT-LUKAS FILM SCHOOL IN BRUSSELS, WE WERE ASKED TO DO THE SAME THING. SO I WAS ALREADY ON THE RIGHT TRACK!’ Further proof that he was on the right track came when his graduation film, Nan, won a VAF Wildcard award in 2008. He used that prize to make his first professional short film, returning to Iraq to shoot Land of the Heroes.

This is a darkly comic tale of three kids playing at ‘Saddam’ while their mothers are busy cleaning weapons that the children have collected from near-by battlefields. Selected at more than 100 film festivals around the world it has gathered a score of awards, including Best Short Film in the Berlin Film Festival’s youth section.

He followed this with another short made in Iraq, Baghdad Messi. This concerns a football-mad 10-year-old whose future on the village team depends on his father’s TV working during a Barcelona championship match.

But getting a TV fixed in war-torn Iraq is no easy matter.

It is no coincidence that both films take a child’s eye view. ‘You can’t compare a childhood in the Middle East to a childhood in Europe,’ he says. ‘I was greatly affected by all the conflict in the region, and my strongest memories are from my childhood. But that includes both the best and the worst things in my life.’

Born in 1980, he stayed behind in Iraqi Kurdistan to finish his studies when his parents and younger siblings left the country in the late 1990s. He joined them in Belgium in 2001, where he was at last able to follow his dream of going to film school.

Güney, Hitchcock and Kubrick

Kurdish culture and tradition remain strong influences on his work, but the region is short on cinematic role models. An exception is the great Turkish-Kurdish director Yilmaz Güney. ‘He made a lot of good movies under very difficult conditions,’ Kalifa says. ‘For example, he was in prison when he directed Yol, and it won the Golden Palm in Cannes. So watching his movies always gives me a lot of courage and the enthusiasm to make more movies.’ Otherwise Kalifa’s approach to storytelling and his way of thinking about cinema have both been shaped by his time in Europe. Favourite directors include Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, for their handling of psychology and suspense in films such as Rear Window, Vertigo and The Shining.

Once Upon a Time in the West

After two films centred on children, he shifted to an adult point of view for his third short film, Bad Hunter. This concerns a reluctant young hunter who saves a young woman from being attacked, but does not get the thanks he expects. ‘There are a lot of reasons for telling this story,’ Kalifa explains. ‘It shows that you need to have courage in your life, but also that our culture sometimes gives us no option but to lie.’

He shot the film near his home town in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the landscape of open hills cut by deep wooded valleys evokes strong memories. ‘When you go to the villages, you sometimes feel you are in a cowboy movie,’ he recalls. ‘So I thought that I would also make a movie that had a little bit of a Western look.’ A favourite in this genre is Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.

Bad Hunter had its première at the Leuven International Short Film Festival, and went on to win the Jury Prize at the Montreal World Film Festival. It will also screen at the Valladolid Film Festival in Spain.

Farhadi and Akin

Kalifa’s next project will be his feature debut, Zagros, the tale of a Kurdish shepherd who leaves the land he loves in order to come to Brussels and work to support his demanding wife. Co-written with Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem (Brasserie Romantique; Moscow, Belgium), the film also draws on Kalifa’s experience of coming to live in Europe.

‘I’ve seen a lot of things here in Belgium, so I think I know this world very well.’ he says. ‘When people from Islamic countries come to Europe they face a lot of difficulties and they have to give up a lot of things from their culture and traditions.’

He is not put off by the many directors who have explored immigrant themes before him, and he takes inspiration from those who have also made connections between East and West, such as Asghar Farhadi and Fatih Akin.

Farhadi’s A Separation is a particular favourite. ‘The important thing is how you tell your story, and to be original,’ Kalifa says. 

50

Sahim @ TEDx

Sahim Omar Khalifa on flandersimage.com

INSPIRATIONAL These are some of the works Sahim Omar Kalifa currently gets inspired by:

BOOK

'The Yezidis'

by Birgül Açikyildiz

MUSIC

Lana Del Rey

FILM

Salaud, on t'aime

by Claude Lelouch

COMEDY Jon Stewart

SAHIM OMAR KALIFA TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

PHOTOGRAPHY Sven Nykvist

51

fans

DAVE KEHR LOST PERSONS AREA I’M THE SAME I’M AN OTHER TEXT GEOFFREY MACNAB

LEADING US CRITIC TURNED MOMA FILM ADJUNCT CURATOR DAVE KEHR STUMBLED ON BELGIAN DIRECTOR CAROLINE STRUBBE’S MOVIES ALMOST BY ACCIDENT. ‘I always ask friends and other people in the professional world what they think is important that hasn’t been seen in New York City,’ Kehr recalls. A friend from LA tipped him off that Strubbe’s I’m the same I’m an other (2013) was ‘a magnificent movie’.

Kehr asked MoMA’s Department of Film curator Jytte Jensen, who is also one of the programmers of New Directors/New Films in New York, if she had heard of the film. ‘Indeed, she had,’ he recalls. It had passed through their hands via Flanders Image. ‘But for various reasons the film did not earn

52

its correct place in the festival. She said that she not only had a screener of it but she had also recently received a screener of the first film (Lost Persons Area from 2009) that I was completely unaware of.’

Kehr watched the films out of order, starting with I’m the same I’m an other and then moving on to its predecessor.

‘I still found them completely fascinating,’ he recalls. He relished Strubbe’s elliptical and enigmatic storytelling style - the way, as he puts it, ‘that you are asked to fill in the narrative.’

‘She is asking you to try to reach an inner state by looking at a surface,’ the curator suggests. ‘It’s a more interesting way of trying to get into someone’s mind than through explicit exposition. If we are allowed to intuit those feelings, it’s just a much more powerful effect than having someone say

“I feel horribly lonely and alienated because my parents are not paying any attention to me.”’

‘The movies remain a bit vague and mysterious right up to the end, even when you have seen both of them,’ Kehr continues. ‘I was just completely intrigued by the power of her visual style and the way she was able to evoke so much just with an image. That’s a very, very rare talent these days.

It immediately struck me she was an important director.’

Kehr originally saw the movies on screeners but was very confident that Strubbe’s work (which he programmed earlier this summer at MoMA) would hold up equally well on the big screen. ‘Indeed, it did!’

Ask him for parallels to Strubbe and he points to ‘the obvious comparisons’ to the minimalist tradition Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni. ‘But I never felt that she was directly under the influence of anyone or indebted to anyone.’

Now, Kehr is waiting for Strubbe to complete the third part in the Lost Persons trilogy. ‘It may be a few years until we get another instalment,’ he says. ‘Apparently, she needs to wait until the little girl grows up.’

As for the struggles Strubbe’s films have faced in securing international exposure, Kehr suggests that says more about the limitations of distributors than about any shortcomings in her work.

‘People have become used to a very spoon fed kind of storytelling now. In the context of American commercial films, you couldn’t get more obvious (about) psychological factors. Everything is spelled out as if the character is lying on a therapist’s couch… it’s so trite and so obvious. If people aren’t asked to explore things on their own, those instincts atrophy. With a film like this… they don’t know how to process it.’  moma.org

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More news and features on www.flandersimage.com PUBLISHED BY Flanders Image/VAF Flanders Film House Bischoffsheimlaan 38, B-1000 Brussels / Belgium/EU T +32-2-226 0630 / F +32-2-219 1936 E flandersimage@vaf.be Flanders Image is a division of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) SPECIAL THANKS TO / Albert Bimmel, Dirk Cools, Myriam De Boeck, Pierre Drouot, Siebe Dumon, Tom Van der Elst, Erik Martens, Karla Puttemans, Jan Roekens, Koen Salmon, Dirk Schoenmaekers, Katrijn Steylaerts, Liesbeth Van de Casseye, Karen Van Hellemont, Marijke Vandebuerie, Sander Vanhellemont, Helga Vinck + all the filmmakers and producers who helped on this issue.