#21 - Autumn 2011

flanders

TAKE 21 | AUTUMN 2011 | e 3.99

Exclusive

first images of new films by Fien Troch and Felix van Groeningen

Geoffrey enthoven Come as you are

BEAST Generation the buzz about the new animation studio

Big in Belgium AND BEYOND

Issaka Sawadogo

in The Invader and Hotel Swooni

ALEXIS DESTOOP SUE GREEN TOM HEENEN ERIK VAN LOOY Frank Van Mechelen BRAM VAN PAESSCHEN WIM VANDEKEYBUS DIDIER VOLCKAERT PATRICK WACHSBERGER

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‘Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, right down to the actual blue bird I had planned to film with. It simply wasn’t there at that time of the year so we had to use a dove instead, which was perhaps a little less magical-looking. To be fair, it wasn’t such a disaster in the end – I believe in the permanent search and that clinging on to a certain idea does not lead to anything. One drawback of our three doves though – we had a grey one, a white one and a mottled one – was that everyone wanted to eat them. While I was shooting the scene on the roof in which the boy, Bafiokadié, sets the dove free, there were about 15 men standing surrounding us with clubs, ready to kill it. I had to beg them: “You can catch it, but please let it live for a little while longer until I’ve got my shot!”’

Gust Van den Berghe on the adventure of shooting Blue Bird in Taberma, Togo Interview by Tine Hens in FOCUS Knack - 29 June 2011

C NTENT I Take 21

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‘If you want to conquer a country, you better do it not alone,’ says Erik Van Looy about working with Matthias Schoenaerts, Nicolas Karakatsanis and Hilde De Laere on his first American movie.

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Burkina Faso born actor Issaka Sawadogo has become a familiar face in Flemish cinema. He already worked with directors such as Marion Hänsel, Nicolas Provost and Kaat Beels.

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Ben Tesseur and Steven De Beul of BEAST Animation explain the current BUZZ on the studio floor.

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'The moment you can see the humour in life you are ready to have some perspective on it,’ says Geoffrey Enthoven about his new feature, Come As You Are.

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Although using a state-of-the-art digital camera, Frank Van Passel thought it was vital to retain some analogue attitudes while filming Madonna’s Pig.

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Documentary filmmaker Bram Van Paesschen likes to add a spoonful of fictional elements to films such as Empire of Dust.

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When people were wondering whether he could also let people speak, choreographer Wim Vandekeybus decided to write a project in which people only speak.

Monkey Sandwich was born.

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If Tom Heene’s Welcome Home is a love letter to Brussels, it is a very barbed one.

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You won’t find an old man on a horse in Didier Volckaert’s Quixote’s Island.

42 2 Quote Gust Van den Berghe | 6 i-Opener Lena , Kid, The Broken Circle Breakdown | 13 Shortissimo The Extraordinary Life of Rocky | 26 Bizz Sue Green | 50 Influence Alexis Destoop | 52 Icons | 54 Fans Patrick Wachsberger | www.flandersimage.com it’s the talent that matters

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'If you want to conquer a country, You better do it not alone' On a muggy morning in New Orleans in late May, Flemish filmmaker Erik Van Looy is making last minute preparations for the production of his first American movie, The Loft.

TEXT GEOFFREY MACNAB

Illustration Karl Meersman

The $15 million film, due to shoot in early June, is a US remake of Van Looy’s own 2008 runaway hit Belgian movie, Loft which posted a staggering 1.2 million admissions in its home territory. It’s the story of a group of philandering male friends who share a spacious loft in which they secretly entertain their lovers and latest conquests. All works well… until a dead body turns up in their midst. Steve Golin’s Anonymous Content has come on board to produce the film, which is being sold to international distributors by Sierra/ Affinity. Several top young American actors are in the ensemble cast, among them Wentworth Miller (Prison Break), Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family), Patrick Wilson (Watchmen) and James Marsden (X-Men).

The American audiences who will eventually go to see The Loft are very unlikely to have any idea about its Belgian origins. However, as Van Looy points out, the new movie still has a strong Flemish flavour. He has recruited the brilliant young Belgian cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis to shoot it. Appearing alongside the big American names in the cast is fast-rising Flemish actor Matthias Schoenaerts (who co-starred in the original). The new movie has been put together with Belgian as well as American financing and is due to shoot interiors in Belgium. Van Looy’s regular producer Hilde De Laere of Woestijnvis is partnering on the project.

too much philandering The Hollywood remake has been gestating for nearly three years. ‘There was immediate interest from the studios because of the numbers in Belgium and the high attendance from audiences,’ Van Looy recalls. Even so, he realized that the Americans were wary about some aspects of the original. This is a movie about ‘five guys cheating on their wives’.

For some studio execs, this was just a little too much philandering for one film. Van Looy had conversations in which it was proposed that only one or two of the men should actually be cheating on their wives. ‘And the others should come to the loft to play video games!’

Thankfully, Anonymous Content was ready to back Van Looy’s vision of what he calls ‘a very loyal remake’.

The adventurous American company was also willing to let the director bring his Belgian collaborators with him - namely actor Schoenaerts and cinematographer Karakatsanis.

Both had recently worked together on Michael Roskam’s local box-office hit Bullhead. Schoenaerts famously put on 27 kilos in weight for his role as the agricultural worker caught up in a mafia doping scandal. That weight has now all come off but the actor’s intensity remains. The producers were as impressed by Schoenaerts’ audition as Van Looy himself had been. ‘On an ensemble movie, the Americans don’t mind launching a new star,’ he says of their willingness to cast a Belgian actor in a key role.

version three ‘It’s nice to have an environment with people you know and trust and then to mix it up with the big crew over here,’ Van Looy adds of the Belgian contingent. ‘It makes me feel a bit more comfortable. Also, I know these people are very good.’

He adds, tongue in cheek, ‘if you want to conquer a country, you better do it not alone.’ After all, he notes, when Paul Verhoeven went to Hollywood, he took Rutger Hauer with him. ‘I had the same feeling – I can’t come here with empty hands!’ The crew in New Orleans is around 100 strong, more than twice the size of average Belgian crews.

Van Looy will have his own trailer… but he is not going to let that go to his head.

The American remake will be the third version of the story.

A Dutch version, for which Van Looy directed a few scenes when its director was injured, was made last year. Yes, the material is very familiar. ‘It becomes your child,’ Van Looy reflects. ‘I like it as much as I ever did before. Everyone asks why I am making it again. My answer is always the same.

I’d rather make a really good movie twice than a mediocre one once!’

Will Erik Van Looy turn his back on Flanders?

Read the full interview on www.flandersimage.com

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Lena Christophe Van Rompaey’s (Moscow, Belgium) second feature is the Toronto-selected Lena, in which he portrays a lonely, overweight teenage girl who, much to her surprise, gets into a relationship with the popular Daan. She moves in with him and his weird father, and is willing to do a lot for love. Almost anything, in fact.

Starring Emma Levie, Niels Gomperts, Jeroen Willems and Lisa Smit, and scripted by Mieke de Jong, the film was edited by Nico Leunen. Director of photography is Menno Westendorp.

Lena is a Dutch-Belgian co-production with A Private View attached as Flemish production partner.

International sales are handled by Bavaria Film International. ď Š www.flandersimage.com

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KID Principal photography has started on Fien Troch’s third feature, Kid. In this new film, the director of Someone Else’s Happiness and Unspoken presents a touching story filled with subtle humour about the ups and downs of a young boy’s search for some tender loving care.

A very cheerful boy, Kid lives on a farm with his mother and his brother, Billy. While trying to make ends meet, their mother does everything in her power to create a warm, loving home for the boys. But then fate steps in and their mother dies and Kid and Billy have to look for their own tiny bit of happiness.

Produced by Prime Time’s Nino Lombardo, who also produced Troch’s first two features, Kid stars Bent Simons, Maarten Meeuwsen, Gabriella Carizzo and Rit Ghoos.  www.flandersimage.com

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The Broken Circle Bre akdown Principal photography has now begun on Felix van Groeningen’s new feature, The Broken Circle Breakdown. For his fourth feature, the director of The Misfortunates presents an intense love story scored with bluegrass and raw sadness. Elise is 28 and owns her own tattoo parlour. 36-year-old Didier is a Flemish cowboy who plays the banjo in a band. Although in many respects they are as alike as day and night, somehow their characters match perfectly and the arrival of their baby, Maybelle, makes their happiness complete. Life is good until one day, fate intervenes, and they lose their daughter. The Broken Circle Breakdown is a story about how love conquers fate, although sometimes fate bites back.

Starring Veerle Baetens (Loft) and Johan Heldenbergh (The Misfortunates, Come As You Are), the film is produced by Dirk Impens for Menuet. Impens was also responsible for the production of van Groeningen’s previous features.  www.flandersimage.com

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shor t i ssimo

The Extraordinary Life of Rocky In Kevin Meul’s short The Extraordinary Life of Rocky, a boy grows up surrounded by death: every one of the people close to him dies in a freak accident and on every occasion he’s at the centre of it all. Gradually, he comes to realise that from the moment he takes someone to his heart, that person’s life is over. This is a modern tale about a lot of bad luck and a tiny bit of bliss.

Produced by Steven Dhoedt for Visualantics, and scripted by Meul, The Extroardinary Life of Rocky stars Kenneth Van Baeden, Ruth Becquart, Wim Willaert and Jef Demedts. Director of Photography is Nicolas Karakatsanis (Bullhead, The Loft), while pop band Das Pop signed for the original music in the film.

The 13-minute short, which recently won an award at the Brussels Film Festival, will be shown together with other Flemish shorts including Dancing with Travolta, Swimsuit 46 (also with Kenneth Van Baeden) and Bento Monogatari at this year’s 35th Montreal World Film Festival.  www.flandersimage.com

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Actor Isaka Sawadogo and director Nicolas Provost were both a long way from home when they met in Oslo in 2003. They channelled their common experience of living in Norway into the short film Exoticore, whose success led to a series of feature film roles for Sawadogo, all with a Flemish connection. The most recent examples are the Toronto selected Hotel Swooni

by Kaat Beels and The Invader, Provost's feature debut which is also invited to Venice.

Text Ian Mundell Portrait Bart Dewaele

Playing the

Invader

Sawadogo has acted on film and TV in Norway and Africa, but his major cinema roles all spring from his first encounter with Provost in Oslo. The phone call came out of the blue, asking Sawadogo if he was interested in appearing in a short film that Provost was making on a shoestring budget before returning to Brussels.

The director wanted to say something about the difficulty he had experienced integrating in Norwegian society over nearly a decade living in the country. ‘The story is the same one that all strangers in Norway experience,’ Sawadogo says.

The idea created an immediate connection between them.

‘We had the same feeling about Norway. Not anywhere, but Norway in particular.’

In Exoticore, Sawadogo plays an African man working as a driver on the Oslo subway, whose friendly advances to

workmates and the people he meets in daily life are either brushed aside or dismissed with outright hostility. Playing up to people’s stereotyped view is no more successful, and finally he is driven to extravagant acts of revolt and passive acceptance.

The film took just a few days to shoot and then Provost went away to edit the images. When it was finished in 2004 it started to appear in film festivals, winning prizes for its leading actor. ‘People saw it and contacted me about long film roles,’ Sawadogo says, ‘and they still do now.’

The Invader One of the people who got in touch was Marion Hänsel, a Belgian director working across the language divide who often shoots abroad. She was casting Si le vent soulève les

front The Invader

sables (known in English as Sounds of Sand), the tale of a village school teacher in an un-named East African country who takes his family on a hazardous desert journey in order to escape a drought.

‘She saw Exoticore and was convinced that I was the one,’ Sawadogo recalls. ‘She came to meet me in Burkina Faso. She told me the story, and that was better than reading the script.’ There were parallels between the film and his own experience. ‘I remembered different small things that had happened to me, so I already found some references to my life in her story.’

However, he was a bit too healthy to play a man driven out of his home by the threat of war and famine. ‘I had to lose weight! I couldn’t be fit,’ he recalls. He shed 10 kilos before the cameras rolled. ‘I started to be this person three months before we shot. I was already into the character: reading, searching, seeing and feeling it.’

At around the same time he made another short film with Provost. Induction is a more experimental treatment of the outsider theme explored in Exoticore, bringing together a shaman (Sawadogo), a lonely woman and a young boy in an opulent country house.

The line of thought developing in these two experimental films leads directly to Provost’s debut feature, The Invader, written with Sawadogo in mind for the leading role. ‘The film is about all strangers around the world who, for one reason or another, move from their home countries, have to settle somewhere and integrate in society,’ Sawadogo explains. ‘They always meet these problems of rejection and trying to build up a life.’

In the film he plays a clandestine immigrant in Brussels who clashes with the people around him. ‘The community, society transforms him from a very positive person, full of love, to hate. The love that he cannot give away transforms into violence and destruction, so he destroys himself and everything around him. He cannot even see the beauty of his own life.’

Since that first encounter, Sawadogo and Provost have developed a close collaboration. ‘We are like a laboratory where we put things together. It’s very interesting to work in this way.’

On the set, Provost involved him in the creative process, discussing problems and trying out new solutions. ‘He is still doing research and trying to find himself as a film director. He has a lot of references in his mind,’ Sawadogo explains, remembering instances when Provost gave him other film sequences to look at to stimulate the

Sawadogo (l), Stefania Rocca and Provost (r)

The best way not to lose your identity is to open it out, so people get to know it

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Hotel Swooni

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discussion. ‘He would say: “it’s something like that, but it’s us!”’ This draws on a close personal bond. ‘I can say he is my friend. Not just an acquaintance, but a real friend, and we understand the deeper side of what we are talking about.’ But there is also a professional admiration. ‘I like Nicolas because he is bringing something new into the world of movies. He is unique. He is exceptional.’

Hotel Swooni Before The Invader appears on the big screen, Sawadogo will be seen in another Flemish movie, the also for Toronto selected Hotel Swooni by Kaat Beels. Here he plays a father making the perilous clandestine crossing from Africa to Europe with his young son. Before they are separated in a police raid, he tells his son to meet him at the hotel which is the cross-roads for all the stories in the film. ‘It’s a different story, but the character is similar,’ Sawadogo says. ‘I’m playing someone who is becoming a stranger somewhere.’

In this production he is part of a large ensemble cast, which together with Beels’ desire to shoot on film rather than digital cameras meant more preparation and rehearsal.

However there was still room for the actors to contribute.

‘She would direct, of course, but we understood each situation and we were able to give something. Only if it was not enough would she come in and make corrections,’ he says.

Even though this is Beels’ first feature, Sawadogo felt he was in capable hands. ‘I had full confidence in her, and I fell in love with her way of working.’

In the future Sawadogo plans to continue his nomadic life, and has film projects lined up in both Africa and Europe.

But he also has a new focus in Burkina Faso, having recently set up a cultural centre for pre-school education in the capital, Ouagadougou.

This project, which has been on his mind for more than a decade, will welcome some 200 street children and help them to begin their education. The plan is to finance it with his work, plus donations from friends and other sponsors.

‘I have to go back and organise the courses, organise the life of this centre and help the kids. At the same time I need to work, to keep going to support these kids. It’s a big responsibility.’

His experience working on Flemish films has produced an appreciation of the industry, but he sees more scope for internationalisation. ‘The film industry in this part of the world is well-developed, but still too few of the films are well-known,’ he says. ‘They are all turned inward, a bit like Norway. Films like Sounds of Sand, which had a significant international career, and Provost’s work show the way. ‘Through Nicolas, people know about the Flemish film milieu,’ Sawadogo says. ‘This is how it should be, and I

front Sounds of Sand

Actor, cultural advisor, artistic director Issaka Sawadogo was born in Burkina Faso, West Africa in 1966, becoming a professional actor in 1987. The theatre group with which he worked had a connection with Norway and, in 1992, he played the lead role in a production of ‘Peer Gynt’ that was invited to the Ibsen festival in Oslo. The impression he made in that play resulted in an invitation to return for another production, and since then one project has lead to another.

As well as acting in Norway, Sawadogo has become a cultural adviser to the National Theatre in Oslo and an educator who teaches storytelling, dance and performance in schools across the country. ‘I never decided to leave my country,’ he says, ‘it is just the profession that has made me a European, in a way. But I keep the road clear and I go back and forth for different projects.’ Back in Burkina Faso he was a founding member of CITO, the Carrefour International du Théâtre de Ouagadougou, working as its artistic director for five years as well as putting on performances and leading workshops.

‘Now CITO is one of the biggest professional theatres in Burkina Faso, and the whole West African region,’ he says.

Exoticore Besides The Invader, Provost’s short Moving Stories is also selected for Venice’s Orizzonti programme.

Issaka Sawadogo (°1966)* hope Hotel Swooni and other films will become known in the same way.’ A first step into that direction for Hotel Swooni is its selection for the Toronto International Film Festival. So things are changing.

At the same time, filmmakers have to remember where they come from. ‘Of course you have to respect your own identity. That’s very important. But the best way not to lose your identity is to open it out, so people get to know it.’ 

(2011) – THE INVADER (2011) – HOTEL SWOONI (2006) – INDUCTION (2006) – SOUNDS OF SAND (2004) – EXOTICORE (2003-9) – HOTEL CAESAR (TV) (2003) – SVIDD NEGER * selected filmography

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Simply T he bea s t

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There's a buzz around the new Beast Animation studio in Mechelen. Partly it's the sound of power tools putting the finishing touches to the building, partly it's the hum of activity that goes along with stop-motion animation, the Beast speciality.

Text Ian Mundell

producers

‘If we go into 3D animation studios we see a lot of people sitting in front of computers with their headphones on, not talking to each other,’ says Ben Tesseur, one of Beast’s two founders. ‘All you hear is click-click-click and the computers whirring.’

In contrast, the people working at Beast chat away and listen to music as they adjust lighting rigs, dress sets and manipulate puppets. ‘The atmosphere on a stop-motion set is similar to live-action shooting,’ Tesseur says, ‘but without the screaming. It’s more or less the same madness, but a bit slower.’

There’s also a certain amount of tension, because a stopmotion sequence has to run through in one take, just like live-action filming. ‘We start a shot and we finish it 10 or 12 hours later,’ explains Steven De Beul, Beast’s other founder.

‘It has to be good from the first, and if not you lose a day. In 2D and 3D animation you can go back and change things.’

Bazas

panic De Beul and Tesseur set up Beast Animation in 2004, providing animation and directing services in their Brussels studio as well as facilities for hire. They decided to specialise in stop-motion animation, but not to limit themselves to one style. They have animated puppets, cut-outs and people, as well as bringing everyday objects to life in films, commercials and other visual products. ‘We try to do everything possible with stop-motion animation. We go for diversity,’ says De Beul.

After a while they were also drawn into production, first with some Lotto commercials and then as co-producers of the feature film A Town Called Panic, which they also helped make. ‘It was the first Belgian stop-motion feature made in 60 years,’ says De Beul, ‘so for us this was a once-in-alifetime opportunity to be that close to a feature film project.’

De Beul worked as director of animation on the film and Tesseur was first assistant director. Production duties were handled by a third member of the team, Pilar Torres Villodre.

She decided to leave the company at the beginning of 2011, so now Tesseur and De Beul are handling the production side themselves. ‘It’s not really a distraction from filming, but we have less time to be really creative.’ says De Beul. ‘That’s why we love animating, preparing sets and discussing light.

As well as producing something we want to be creative on the set.’

Dimitri

Oh Willy

creative appeal Moving to new premises in Mechelen, a medium-sized town between Brussels and Antwerp, gives Beast a more adaptable and presentable work-space. Alongside the studio there is a workshop for building sets and offices for the production side of the business.

‘We are happier in this building,’ says Tesseur. ‘There is more light, the space is different – it’s bigger and the ceilings are higher – and we can divide the shooting studio up according to the production we have in-house.’

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AndrĂŠ delvAux DvD collection

cinematek pays homage to the unique work of internationally acclaimed Belgian director andrĂŠ Delvaux. over a period of two years, six feature films will be restored and made available on DvD. a bonus disc will complete the edition with lesser-known short films and documentaries, together with a portrait of the film maker.

Royal Belgian Film aRchive inFoRmation : www.cinematek.Be/DvD

producers

The present buzz on the studio floor is down to Oh Willy, a short film being made by Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels, which tells the story of a large man lost in a world of cotton wool and fabrics. Beast is producing the film, along with Vivement Lundi and Polaris in France and Il Luster in the Netherlands. Meanwhile Tesseur and De Beul have just finished working on a commercial for a scheme which promotes environmentally sustainable forestry, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). The spot commisioned by Mc Cann Lowe involves paper cut-outs of trees rising and falling out of a page, the animation producing a tactile atmosphere that appealed to the client.

Creative appeal is always an important factor when Beast decides which projects to take on.

Sometimes the challenge will trump the lack of budget, as it did when they were asked to animate a series of dead animals for French director Bertrand Mandico’s La Resurrection des natures mortes (The Resurrection of Still Lives). ‘It was so weird,’ says Tesseur, ‘but it was a crazy experience and it’s a nice thing for us to put on our show reel, and the film will be shown at the Venice Film Festival.’  www.flandersanimation.be

‘A lot of 3D animators put a key frame at the beginning of a movement and at the end of a movement and let the computer work it out, while we want to control every frame’ – Steven De Beul

Emilie, Bazas, Dimitri, Ray & Ruby After Oh Willy, Beast will play host to Emilie, a short film by the Luxembourg animator Olivier Pesch. This will tell the story of a seven-year-old girl who makes friends with a bizarre band of monkeys who come to live in a nearby rubbish dump. ‘Animating monkeys is not the easiest thing, so I’m curious to see how that will go,’ says Tesseur.

The 15-week shoot will begin in October with a team of 10 people. Samsa Film in Luxembourg is the main producer, with Beast and LEV Pictures in the Netherlands co-producing. Beyond that, Beast is hoping to line up an animated series for children, with three projects currently in development.

Bazas is a 100% Beast production that began life as an online Christmas card featuring an accident-prone felt character. People could click on gift boxes and see 16 different animated results. ‘Kids really loved it,’ recalls De Beul, ‘so we thought: why not try to make a series out of it?’

The twist is that they chose to do this through a novel seven-second format. ‘The idea is to make 104 episodes and use them as interstitials or between commercials,’ he explains. ‘We can also make adaptations out of it, such as e-cards, video cards, mobile and iPad applications.’ The project gets an enthusiastic welcome from broadcasters, but money is always an issue. ‘They want us to finish all 104 episodes before they commit to it.’

Beast is making the episodes when time and money allows, which is far from satisfactory. ‘If we had pre-financ-

ing we could hire a team, set aside a month and do it,’ says Tesseur.

A second series in development is Dimitri, a Vivement Lundi project for pre-school children about a small bird left behind in Africa when his family migrates to Europe. ‘He meets other animals, so it’s about meeting new people, makings friends, working together,’ Tesseur explains. The project will be presented at Cartoon Forum in September, and if it attracts finance Beast will co-produce and possibly host the filming.

The third series is Ray & Ruby, a tale of two mice developed by Sabine De Vos and Sabine Martens, which will also be pitched at Cartoon Forum this year. Initially conceived as a stop-motion project, the arrival of major producers Eyeworks and Creative Conspiracy prompted a shift to computer animation. ‘They decided to do it in 3D, so we were out of the picture,’ says Tesseur, ‘but then all of a sudden they called us to direct it.’

‘The idea is not to install computers and do the 3D ourselves, but to direct things,’ De Beul adds quickly. ‘I think they wanted us because we see animation differently than they do. A lot of 3D animators put a key frame at the beginning of a movement and at the end of a movement and let the computer work it out, while we want to control every frame.’ www.beastanimation.be

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Boys just wanna have...

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Geoffrey Enthoven's taste for taboo subjects, such as old age, depression and death, sometimes makes his films difficult to finance.

Not so Come As You Are (aka Hasta la vista), the tale of three young disabled men who go on a road trip to Spain in order to lose their virginities in a specialist brothel. 'The money fell out of the sky,' he says. 'Everybody wanted to see this film.'

Text Ian Mundell

Portrait Bart Dewaele

nter view i

Part of the attraction, he thinks, is that a common experience lurks beneath the quirky storyline. ‘Ultimately, it’s just the story of three guys who want to score on holiday. I think everyone can recognise that.’

The starting point for the film was a BBC documentary, For One Night Only, which followed Asta Philpot and two other disabled men on a journey to just such a brothel in Spain. Philpot, who was born with arthrogryposis and is unable to move most of his body, had a life-changing experience losing his virginity in this way and wanted to share the experience with other people who had never known sexual intimacy. ‘The guy is so positive,’ Enthoven recalls. ‘The film had a huge effect on us.’ The idea of adapting the story for a feature film came from Mariano Vanhoof, Enthoven’s partner in production company Fobic Films. Vanhoof contacted Philpot, who loved the idea, and they developed a treatment together.

This was turned into a screenplay by Pierre de Clercq, well-known in Flanders for his work on the TV series and film Stormforce and the feature comedy A Perfect Match. ‘It was the first time I’d worked with Pierre and it went really well. I think this is his best script,’ Enthoven says.

friendship It was clear from the outset that simply replicating the documentary was not enough. ‘This is a movie so it has to be a great adventure and a great experience as well,’ Enthoven says. So, where Philpot made the journey with his parents, the three characters in Come As You Are (aka Hasta la vista) - Philip, Lars and Jozef decide to go alone.

Their parents agree, as long as they approve a nurse who will go with them and the doctors agree that it is safe. Lars’ doctor objects, saying that his condition could become terminal at any moment, and the trip appears to be off. But the guys decide to go anyway. They strike a deal with another, less up-market carer and giving their parents the slip. Enthoven sees this sense of adventure and the urgency of Lars’ condition as essential to the success of the movie treatment. ‘It pushes all the characters to reveal their real personalities. That’s good for the story.’

And in the process it goes beyond focusing simply on the boys’ sexual goal. ‘It’s also about friendship,’ Enthoven explains. ‘At several points in the story you can see how friendship works: it’s not just about being nice to one another, it’s about being honest and knowing that you need one another.’ This deeper reflection on life is what Enthoven hopes to bring out with his tragicomic characters, from the irascible pensioner in The Only One who is losing his grip on life to the trio of grannies in The Over the Hill Band who start an R&B group. ‘Life is hard, life is sad but you can laugh at it as well,’ he explains. ‘The moment you can see the humour in life you are ready to have some perspective on it.’ He certainly feels the benefit himself. ‘Doing these films and talking about these subjects helps me to accept life as it is, so if it helps me then I hope it can help other people as well.’

Canuck connection The warm reception he received with some of his previous films at the Montréal World Film Festival inspired Geoffrey Enthoven to look at the possibilities for setting his next, still untitled film there. The story concerns Yvo, a Flemish man who plans to impersonate his dead brother Yvan in order to revive an old love affair with a Canadian woman. He will bed the wealthy Grace, just as Yvan bedded Yvo’s wife, take her fortune and posthumously inflict the ultimate revenge on his brother. Once again, the scenario has been developed by Mariano Vanhoof and Pierre de Clercq. ‘It’s also a tragicomedy, but with more comedy and a bit more larger-than-life than Hasta la vista.’ Belgian producer is Fobic Films. Vanhoof will also attend this year's Toronto International Film Fest to present the project as part of the Producers Lab. www.fobicfilms.com

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Come As You Are

ring-leader His initial idea for Come As You Are had been to shoot the film with a disabled cast, and for 18 months he put potential performers through a rigorous casting process. ‘But then to be really objective I did a comparison with professional actors, and it was so much better,’ he admits.

‘We had Asta with us, so I thought that the story was genuine enough, and as part of our research the process of casting told us a lot.’

In particular he felt he needed actors with sharp comic timing if he was to capture the mordant humour disabled people use among themselves. ‘They are cruel towards each other, but it’s genuine and really funny.’

The first actor he had in mind was Robrecht Vanden Thoren. ‘I knew him from the film The Last Summer. There he was really skinny, so I though that if he was lying back you could really believe that he was disabled.’ Unfortunately, things had changed since that film. ‘Now he has a body like Iggy Pop, but young, with all these muscles!’

This image problem was fixed with some creative wardrobe management, and Vanden Thoren was still able to take on the role of Philip, who is practically immobile in his wheelchair. Despite his disability, Philip is the ring-leader of the group and the most argumentative. ‘I liked the idea that the one who is the most disabled has the biggest mouth,’ Enthoven says. Vanden Thoren relished the challenge of playing someone completely disabled. ‘He wanted to act just with his expression, and use the chair as his body. He became this Wall-E kind of personality, and really integrated this chair into his acting.’

complementary The character of Lars, who is disabled from the waist down, looks like he would have no trouble attracting women. ‘I wanted one of the three characters to be really handsome,’ Enthoven explains. ‘It’s typical with friends, if you go to score girls there is always one who is better looking than the rest. That creates frustration, and I wanted to put that in to the story as well.’

Lars also lets loose the most during the journey. ‘In a way, knowing when your time is going to come can give you great freedom, and that’s what we tried to put in his personal storyline.’ In this role Enthoven cast Gilles De Schryver, who had also been in The Last Summer with Vanden Thoren. ‘The chemistry between those two really works, because they are good friends in real life as well.’ The trio of actors is completed by Tom Audenaert, who plays the blind, goodnatured Jozef. ‘These three guys had it, they were really complementary,’ Enthoven says.

They also proved to be convincing in their assumed disabilities. ‘One of the complements

nter view i I get after test screenings is when people ask if the actors really are disabled.’

Come As You Are will have its world première in competition at the Montréal World Film Festival, before making its national debut by opening the Ostend Film Festival. The Montreal audience gave a warm welcome to Enthoven’s previous film, The OverThe Hill Band, so he is looking forward to going back. ‘The festival team told us that we have a big fan base there already, and they let us know really fast that they wanted the film.’

talent As well as being one of Flanders’ busiest directors, making five features in the past 10 years, Enthoven also works in television. He directed Sara, the local take on Ugly Betty, and more recently helped devise Tegen de sterren op (Against the Stars), a format that sends up Belgian and international celebrities. ‘In a way you can compare it to Saturday Night Live,’ Enthoven says. The show is about to begin its second season. He plans to continue this TV work through Fobic Films. ‘We have other projects that we want to produce or co-produce, but in a more artistic way. I want to work together with other talented people.’

One of the first ideas is a film co-production with commercial broadcaster vtm. Also a tragicomedy, it concerns an aspiring stand-up comedian who suddenly has to look after his estranged and rebellious 15-year-old daughter. First-timer Lieven Van Droogenbroeck will direct under Enthoven’s supervision.

He thinks that these openings for new directors are vital. ‘We have a lot of talent in Flanders, so I hope there are enough opportunities for them to work, if not in film then in television. It’s really important for them to be able to do their jobs.’  www.comeasyouarethemovie.com

'Doing these films and talking about these subjects helps me to accept life as it is, so if it helps me then I hope it can help other people as well'

Geoffrey Enthoven (°1974)* (2011) – Come As You Are (aka Hasta la vista) (2009) – The Over the Hill Band (2008) – Happy Together (2006) – Vidange perdue (2002) – Les Enfants de l’amour * selected filmography

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Three independent Flemish TV production companies have come together in a joint venture that will launch their most creative formats on to the international market.

It’s Sue Green’s job, as managing director of The New Flemish Primitives, to select and package the programmes with the greatest international appeal.

Text Ian Mundell Portrait Bart Dewaele

26

Fine

Young Primitives

fea) across the region.

Along the way she also worked with productions in Belgium, moved to Flanders, and put down roots in the country. ‘My job consisted of working in Sweden, in Finland or in Poland so where my desk was didn’t actually matter,’ she explains. ‘I just needed to be able to get in the car and drive to the airport, so with the consent of my boss at the time I slowly moved my operation to Belgium.’

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‘Flanders is a small but incredibly creative market,’ Green says. One reason for this creativity is that locally produced programmes are constantly benchmarked against broadcasting from neighbouring France, Holland and the UK, all accessible to Flemish viewers. ‘It’s quite a crowded market, where the Flemish are having to compete against interesting programmes, made with bigger budgets,’ she explains.

A number of Flemish production companies have been taken on by international groups looking for a foothold in the territory, and this helps their formats to reach international markets. But things are not so easy for the companies that remain independent. ‘For all the international scouting that happens, by the big groups and broadcasters, you still need to stand up and say: “Here we are!”’

This is why independent producers Woestijnvis, De Filistijnen and deMensen decided to set up The New Flemish Primitives.

‘They realised that it was better to pool their resources and see if there was something they could do in terms of international distribution of their formats,’ says Green.

creative juices Woestijnvis has a broad range of activities, from big prime time studio-based shows and quizzes and magazine programmes to factual entertainment, documentaries and fiction. De Filistijnen is more focused on game-based entertainment, producing location based adventure/reality shows and studio quizzes. And deMensen ranges from studio-based comedy, games, celebrity shows and quizzes to magazines, celebrity based reality and children’s programmes.

While there are slight variations in their audience targets, Green sees the greatest differences in the creative juices flowing through each company. ‘It’s difficult to put your finger on it, but the way they think, the way they work and the way they develop are all very distinctive,’ she says. The end results bear witness to this – you can’t mix them up.’

Her first task has been to decide which formats in the three companies’ extensive catalogues are most suitable for international sales. ‘Some of them are very good, very well thought-out, but I can’t see them immediately having the same appeal elsewhere,’ she says. ‘They can have enormous numbers, but they have a certain local appeal because of the people who appear in them, the people who host them, or because they have become a sort of institution.’

fresh challenge With 20 years’ experience in the TV business Green is in a good position to judge. She started out working for Reg Grundy Productions, which through a number of take-overs and mergers eventually became Fremantle.

Here she rose to become FremantleMedia Productions’ managing director for Nordic Central and Eastern Europe.

She ran licensing and production operations, established new production companies in Scandinavia and Central Europe, created and acquired of formats both in entertainment and drama, and launched and exec-produced shows such as Pop Idols, X Factor, Got Talent and Farmer Wants a Wife, as well as locally developed daily soaps and telenovellas (including Betty la

Eternal Glory

A company restructuring at Fremantle and a growing family provided dual incentives to take a break in 2009. The opportunity to launch The New Flemish Primitives in 2011 provided Green with a fresh challenge. ‘I also wanted, for the first time, to work with companies in the country where I lived. I wanted the television market to be relevant for me.’

international exposure The New Flemish Primitives made its public debut in April at MIP TV in Cannes. She took along a range of formats, from established brands such as Eternal Glory, Blockx and The Smartest Person in the World, to shows still in their first series.

The more established shows have had some international exposure, but more can still be done to help them find an audience. ‘It’s about keeping awareness going, reminding people that formats are there and seeing what developments have taken place,’ Green says. Ratings build and shows evolve.

‘If someone saw The Smartest Person in the World, for example, in 2003 or 2006 and then again in 2010, it has whole new

27

YOUR PARTNERS IN PRIME www.flandersimage.tv Mipcom I 3-6 October I Level 01 I Booth 20.14

bizz

elements and the ratings have just got even better and better.’

Her greatest success at MIP TV was Basta, a brand new show from Woestijnvis that combines undercover journalism with humour. ‘It takes issues that are close to the team’s hearts, but which also have a social relevance, and gives them a bit of a prod, with a sense of humour,’ says Green. For example, one stunt involved subjecting a telephone company call centre to the same delays, automated menus and holding music that drives most customers wild with frustration.

The show was optioned by Fox for the US markets, with other deals in place for The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Another US producer picked up the fresh new deMensen format Travelling with Dad, which follows a male celebrity and his son or daughter on a road trip for a couple of days. ‘It’s a simple idea, but it works really nicely,’ says Green.

The Island

universal stories Her next major market will be MIPCOM in October, although it is too early to say exactly which formats she will be taking along. ‘I’m going to have something new as well as continuing to market the existing product,’ she says. ‘You can’t take something to one market and then say it has been done.’

She will also be looking into the Woestijnvis fiction catalogue for remake potential. ‘At first glance, some would seem to be so rooted in Flemish culture and society that it might be very difficult,’ she explains. ‘But at the end of the day, they are all about people, relationships, communities and situations, and those stories are universal.’

One show whose international potential she is very keen to explore in more detail is The Island, a comedy drama series about a group of people who sit in the same area of an openplan office, and whose relationships change when one is made the boss. ‘It’s comic, very tongue in cheek but also with a serious line underneath it. I like it very much,’ she says.

It is also possible that some other companies may join the three founders in The New Flemish Primitives in Cannes. ‘We are discussing with a number of independent producers and other format owners about the possibility of taking their formats to MIPCOM or beyond,’ Green says.

high production values As well as selling formats, a company is also a way that deeper collaborations can be forged, with the Flemish partners providing productions services on their shows. This recognises that, in certain cases, considerable expertise has been built up in developing a format. ‘Not only do they come up with very good ideas, but they manage to make them look very good. The production values are very high,’ says Green.

There is already a precedent, with De Filistijnen providing production services for the Finnish version of its show Eternal Glory, which brings together former sports champions in a competitive, reality TV situation shot entirely on location. ‘Where there is a certain expertise that has been developed over series, then it is good and ultimately also far more cost effective to allow the new producer or broadcaster to benefit from that,’ says Green. 

The Smartest Person in the World www.flandersimage.tv At this year’s Mipcom, The New Flemish Primitives will be based at the brand new Flanders Image booth, level 01, no. 20.14.

Going global Flanders has already given the world some winning TV formats. Here are four recent examples.

Benidorm Bastards Senior citizens behave badly in this hidden camera comedy.

NBC acquired the Golden Rose winning format and will present the US version as Off Their Rockers. (Prod: Shelter)

Eternal Glory Reality format in which former athletes compete to demonstrate they have enduring sporting qualities.

Preparing for a fourth chart-busting season in both Sweden and Norway. (Prod: De Filistijnen)

The Mole A team takes on various challenges for a cash prize, but one member is an impostor whose aim is to undermine the rest without being detected. Winner of the Golden Rose, and a.o. sold in The Netherlands, the US, UK, Poland, Spain, Germany, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

(Prod: Woestijnvis)

Peking Express Reality show in which couples hitch hike to a distant location, the last to complete each stage being eliminated.

Sold to a.o. Spain, France and Scandinavia. (Prod: Kanakna)

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A Clockwork Porker

30

A decade separates Villa des Roses and Madonna's Pig, Frank Van Passel's latest film. But he says it doesn't feel like he's been away. 'I didn't stop directing over the past 10 years, but it's true that I stopped making feature films,' he says. Instead he made prize-winning television drama, shot commercials and started the production company now known as Caviar. 'That took a lot of time, but now Caviar has a life of its own I can go back to where my heart is.'

Text Ian Mundell

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

After Villa des Roses Van Passel decided he should take some time out to think before making another feature. ‘In a certain sense I was happy with the film, but I can’t deny that it wasn’t the biggest success,’ he says. ‘Its ambitions were greater than its final achievements, and that’s not good. As a filmmaker, that’s the moment to start asking questions about where it went wrong.’

Madonna’s Pig is the result of that reflection. ‘I’ve gone back to a local story, a Flemish speaking story, to things that are closer to me,’ he explains. ‘And I’m more in control, not only of the content of the film but also of the production surrounding it.’

Maria The story begins when Tony Roozen, a 25-year-old salesman, heads into the Flemish countryside on a mission to sell Porki. This is a robotic pig which produces noises and vibrations intended to arouse the desires of real pigs and so produce more piglets. It’s a hard sell, but the bonus is worth it and Tony needs the cash to get married. Near the town of Madonna, Tony swerves to avoid someone in the road and his van ends up in a ditch. He goes into the town, but this bizarre rural backwater seems to have cut itself off from the world. There is no mobile phone or wireless network, and no-one wants to help him, since they are too busy arguing over the plan to build a new road through the town.

But the young school teacher Maria takes an interest. She is concerned that the road will disturb the dead from World War I, including her own grandfather, whose bodies still lie in

the fields around the town. And the figure that Tony swerved to avoid appeared to be a WWI soldier.

‘I’ve felt for a long time that we are the last generation that is connected with people who lived through this war,’ Van Passel explains. ‘Our grandfathers lived through it or fought in it. So I wanted to make a film about the First World War without it being a war film and also, for a generation like my children to be able to connect to these stories, without it being something historical or documentary.’

He also wanted to include the clash between old and new ways of thinking connected to technology. ‘I thought that the confrontation of this digital thinking and analogue thinking could be a beautiful basis for a story,’ he says. ‘Tony arrives in this small village where, on purpose, they don’t have wireless hotspots and they try to keep on living in the analogue age.’

trusting people The mix of analogue and digital is also present in the making of Madonna’s Pig, which is the first time Van Passel has shot using digital cameras. ‘I’ve hesitated for a long time, but I was totally convinced by this new Alexa camera. For the first time, I couldn’t see the difference.’

Yet he thought it was vital to retain some analogue attitudes to filmmaking, such as carefully planning shots and rehearsing scenes as if valuable film stock was still being used. ‘You don’t do 25 takes if it is not necessary,’ he says, ‘and I absolutely try to avoid having the crew surrounding a monitor. If the DoP wants to check something on the monitor he can, but

nter view i ‘I wanted to make a film about the First World War without it being a war film and also, for a generation like my children to be able to connect to these stories, without it being something historical or documentary'

31

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Madonna’s Pig everyone else should keep on using their eyes.’ He applied this discipline to himself as well. ‘As a director, if you start watching a screen you are not doing your job. For example, you are judging the framing, which I think a director should never do, or should only do in retrospect. Filming is about trusting people, and this triangle between an actor, a director and a DoP is so important. That’s where a movie is made.’

Van Passel’s regular DoP is Jan Vancaillie, and together they share a preference for a slower, more traditional approach to framing. ‘Some people hate it, but I love being able to show the public something, and say: “take your time, just look at the shots”.’

For this modern fable they have gone for a magical look, inspired by the work of photographers such as Stephan Vanfleteren, whose images of old Flemish villages Van Passel admires, and Todd Hido, who specialises in street scenes at the magic hour between day and night. ‘There are a lot of night scenes in Madonna’s Pig, so we had to find a way to translate this magical feeling. And I think Jan managed to do this.’

Porki the pig Asked about his cast, Van Passel jokes that top billing goes to Porki the pig. ‘We had him made by a company in Ghent

and it is based on a real machine that was used in the 1980s.’

However he means no disrespect to the actors, and is quick to praise the acting skill and audience appeal of Kevin Janssens. ‘I thought he would be perfect for Tony.’

Meanwhile Wine Dierickx takes the role of Maria. ‘I honestly think she is the most talented actress living in Belgium at the moment,’ Van Passel says. ‘In Villa des Roses I cast Shirley Henderson, and Wine Dierickx has the same approach to acting, the same passion.’ Alongside them he has cast other favourite actors. Wim Opbrouck, who plays the mayor, had an early role in Van Passel’s debut, Manneken Pis, while the priest is Peter Van den Eede, who featured in the drama series Tales of a Liar.

There are also some newcomers. ‘As a big part of the film takes place in the Westhoek region I cast from local amateur theatres, because I needed lots of old people who were able to act,’ Van Passel says. ‘I was really amazed at the talent I found. I’ve seen actors making their film debut who are 87 and 81, and they are brilliant. I think it's the start of a new career for them.’

A further difference between Villa des Roses and Madonna’s Pig is that Van Passel is now the producer as well as the director of the film, although in this role he also has the support of Caviar’s Bert Hamelinck and Marie van Innis.

nter view i ‘I was only the director in the other movies that I made, but I think I always had a very realistic view on the production limits of what I was doing,’ he says. ‘Of course now I feel these limits much more, but still it doesn’t change very much for me.’ If anything his partners urge him to think more like a director than a producer. ‘Bert helped me a lot, as a colleague producer, by saying: “Oh, forget the money just do it!” That’s a great thing.’  www.flandersimage.com

Frank Van Passel (°1964)* (2011) – Madonna’s Pig (2008) – The Emperor of Taste (TV series) (2002) – Villa des Roses (1997) – Tales of a Liar (TV series) (1995) – Manneken Pis * selected filmography

Frank ambitions As a producer, Frank Van Passel has other projects in the pipeline, the most advanced being the next film of Hilde Van Mieghem (Madly in Love). This will be an adaptation of the novel ‘Sprakeloos’ 'Speechless' by Flemish author Tom Lanoye, the emotional story of an amateur actress touched by memory loss in old age.

Meanwhile for TV he is producing Clan, a 10-episode black comedy about four sisters who decide to kill the husband of a fifth sister. This will be directed by Kaat Beels (Hotel Swooni) and Nathalie Basteyns.

Van Passel is also raising funds for two new directing projects of his own. One is a feature film, Altijd Tevreeden (Always Happy), a commercial comedy that also has a WWI setting. It concerns a Flemish man who invents a highly effective electric car that runs on pigeon droppings. This is a plentiful supply of fuel until the occupying Germans decide pigeons are too useful for potential spies.

The film is a vehicle for the Flemish comedian Urbanus, one of the country’s most bankable stars in the 1980s and early 1990s thanks to films such as Hector and Koko Flanel.

The other project is a six-episode TV drama called Red Star Line, about the ships that ran between Antwerp and New York at the beginning of the last century. Written by Mark Didden, who was also behind the script of The Emperor of Taste and Madonna’s Pig, the story moves from 1912 to 1960 and on to 2012. It calls for a huge cast, locations in New York, Belgium, Austria and Israel, plus substantial sets for the shipboard scenes.

‘It’s very ambitious,’ Van Passel concedes, ‘and maybe a little bit too ambitious for a Belgian television maker, but up until now no one ever died from ambition.’ www.caviarcontent.com

33

Digging out

a story When Bram Van Paesschen set out for the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010 he was expecting to make a film about Chinese mineral traders, following up a previous documentary on the lives of African miners. Things started to go wrong almost as soon as he arrived, and he was forced to improvise. The result, Empire of Dust, suggests he struck gold after all.

Text Ian Mundell

Portrait Bart Dewaele

Congolese reality But when it came to the shoot, the situation had changed.

‘When I got there one of them seemed to have disappeared,’ he says. ‘We started shooting with the other, but he got a lot of pressure from the Chinese community and the Congolese governmental mafia, as I call it, and so he got scared and closed himself off. We had to abandon the subject.’

Then Van Paesschen heard that a Chinese company had won a contract to renovate the 300km road running from local town Kolwezi to the provincial capital Lubumbashi. The company public relations people said he could film the work if he secured permits from the Congolese authorities. ‘I think they expected it to be impossible for a journalist to get these, but luckily I know the minister of internal affairs, and he signed all the necessary papers.’ This was how Van Paesschen found himself hanging around a road-building camp looking for interesting characters

doc

Van Paesschen first thought of travelling to Congo when he was asked to come up with a social documentary for the Flemish TV channel Canvas. ‘I never had this dream of going to Africa,’ he recalls, ‘but I saw pictures of the mine workers and I thought the scenery was very impressive and the situation was interesting.

So I proposed it to them.’

The channel accepted and Van Paesschen was soon on his way to the mineral-rich Katanga province, in the south of Congo. ‘It was like landing on Mars!’ he says of that first experience. But he soon found his feet. ‘You have to be open and patient. You have to be a bit quiet and observe a lot, then you can grasp the situation quite easily.’

The resulting film, Pale Peko Bantu Mambo Ayikosake (Wherever There Are People, Problems Are Never Lacking), follows a group of men who dig out minerals by hand and sell them by the sackload to official buyers, or smuggle them out on the black market. His plan in returning was to explore the other side of this business, following a pair of brothers from the Chinese community who buy minerals from the miners.

‘If I just observe and edit I don’t feel satisfied, I think it’s too easy. I try to help my documentaries by writing in fictional elements’

Fact and Fiction Bram Van Paesschen’s approach to documentary is a little unconventional, since he likes to include moments of fiction. ‘I think that I need to be creative. If I just observe and edit I don’t feel satisfied, I think it’s too easy. I try to help my documentaries by writing in fictional elements.’

In Pale Peko Bantu this involved having one of the characters stage a supposedly fatal fall for the camera, although the viewer is soon let into the secret. In Empire of Dust, the fictional element is a radio station run by a man who insists on playing mournful western guitar music that nobody likes. ‘Friends of mine own a radio station there and this is a sort of a caricature,’ Van Paesschen explains. ‘Because the camp is enclosed and away from reality, I wanted a hint of local colour.’

The music being played adds to the feeling of cultural dislocation, although Van Paesschen also had a personal agenda. ‘I don’t like Congolese music, so it was a good excuse to put the music I like in the movie.’

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among eight Chinese workers. Loa Yang, who as head of logistics had to source the road-building materials, stood out immediately. ‘He had to go out and confront Congolese reality, and that’s why I chose him,’ Van Paesschen explains.

‘Then I realised that his relationship with the interpreter Eddy was also really interesting, so I stuck with them and let the others go.’

Chinese chess The film follows Yang as he tries to buy gravel, stone and even chickens from local entrepreneurs, looking for deals but clearly out of step with local ideas about doing business.

Eddy, a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin, interprets for him but sometimes seems less than loyal to his boss.

Language was also a challenge for Van Paesschen, who speaks some Swahili but no Chinese. ‘A lot of the time I didn’t know what was going on. I told my cameraman to focus on the main characters, and our interpreter had to tell me what was going on when we watched the images in the evening.’

Yang’s unusual openness was one reason the film was possible. ‘I had the feeling that he wanted to show us that Chinese people aren’t as complex as westerners think, that they can also be filmed and be natural, and that they have nothing to be ashamed of in what they are doing,’ Van Paesschen says. ‘And there was also some vanity, but that’s not just a Chinese thing.’

culture clash Over the three-week shoot they were able to film the Chinese at work, but showing them relaxing was not so easy. ‘I wish I had more footage of what they do to divert themselves at night, but something always seemed to come up to stop us,’ Van Paesschen says. Nothing scandalous happened: they would watch DVDs or play Chinese chess, and once a week have a big meal together and drink one beer each. ‘We were invited, but to participate rather than to film.’

Even though the subject of road-building does not have the drama inherent in the lives of the miners, Van Paesschen still found his story. ‘I expected things to run more smoothly for the road workers, but after day one you realise that it is not at all that way,’ he says. ‘The culture clash is happening in simple scenes, such as trying to get a lorry full of stones.’ 

Bram Van PaeSschen (°1979)* (2011) – EMPIRE OF DUST (2008) – PALE PEKO BANTU MAMBO AYIKOSAKE (2007) – ICI (LETTRE À CHANTAL AKERMAN) (2005) – WORLD OF BLUE, LAND OF BLUE (2002) – SMOKESCREEN COVERING BRUSSELS * selected filmography

www.flandersdocs.be

What’s next?

At the time of Pale Peko Bantu Bram Van Paesschen had planned to make a third documentary in Congo, a portrait of a long-time Belgian resident who wants to build a wildlife park to attract tourists to the area. But that idea has also fallen by the wayside. ‘I did some more research and found that there weren’t enough layers for a feature documentary.’

Now he is looking to the Africans in China. ‘There is a vast Congolese community in Guangzhou, mainly doing import-export with Kinshasa, so that’s an option.

But I have yet to go there.’

He is also working on a fiction project, based on the colourful life of a Lebanese man who got rich in Kolwezi before moving to South Africa. A third project, also at an early stage, is a documentary to be shot in Brussels about a man kept at home for 30 years by over-protective parents.

Whichever film project goes forward he hopes to continue working with producer Bart Van Langendonck, of Savage Film. ‘All the directors he works with are really different in what they want to do,’ Van Paesschen explains. ‘He believes in each person’s project and the stories they want to tell, and that’s his strength.’

37

Leaping off the page Choreographer Wim Vandekeybus frequently uses film and video in his stage performances, but a desire to tell stories has drawn him irresistibly towards cinema. The feature-length and venice-selected Monkey Sandwich is his first dialogue-driven project, a stepping-stone to the long-planned film Galloping Mind.

Text Ian Mundell

38

PORTRAIT JOHAN JACOBS

Wim Vandekeybus began exploring photography and film while studying psychology at university, and both these interests stayed with him when he transferred his allegiances to theatre and dance. A successful audition with artist and theatre director Jan Fabre in 1985 led to a two-year period performing in ‘The Power of Theatrical Madness’, after which Vandekeybus set up his own group, Ultima Vez. His first production, ‘What the Body Does Not Remember’ in 1987, began an acclaimed series of stage works that frequently included film elements. But he wanted to do things differently from his contemporaries. ‘I didn’t like at all the way people were using visuals in live performance,’ he says. ‘Mostly what they did was film the dancers and put the two together. For me film was much more another world, a door that opened onto the unconscious or a shared dream.’

maverick nstallation i Room (1) 2

He made short films such as Elba and Federico and The Last Words, based on stories by Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar respectively, as components of dance performances, but they also had an independent career in film festivals.

Vandekeybus also reversed the process, using his dance performances as the starting point for films.

In the stage work ‘Blush’, he arranged a collision between the worlds of film and dance. ‘We had a screen made of elastic which meant that people could dive ‘through’ the screen, appear under water and swim away,’ Vandekeybus explains. ‘Other people appeared to swim in and jump out of the screen. So it was two dimensions and three dimensions combined.’

He subsequently went to Corsica to film some of the dance sequences in natural environments for the ‘fictiondance’ film Blush, which had a theatrical release in France.

But despite the success of this project and the subsequent Here After, Vandekeybus still craved pure narrative. ‘I wanted to tell a story from the beginning to the end, and not to have to link to what is going on on stage,’ he says.

kids on ponies He began work on this first feature project, Galloping Mind, in a typically unconventional way, during a trip to Chile.

‘I travelled around and I said: I’m going to photograph the characters of my film, without letting the people know.’

He told people he was documenting different professions, and in each town he visited he photographed policemen, radio presenters and so on. ‘I came back with a huge portfolio of the whole movie.’

The story that took shape around these images involved the crossed destinies of several characters in a city poised between the desert and the ocean. A man, his wife, his mistress and her twin children cross paths at different moments in their lives, ultimately discovering a common history, impossible love and surreal freedom. All the while, the city is being terrorised by a gang of kids on ponies.

‘It’s about the adult world and the children’s world, where there are different freedoms, different ways of thinking, different limits,’ Vandekeybus explains. ‘They have similar problems, even if they deal with the problems in different ways.’

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© GS Photo

© GS Photo

90,000m² of filming space situated in a green paradise

The stages already welcomed the shooting of French director Rémi Bezançon’s third feature, “Un heureux événement”, as well as Wardour Pictures crime thriller in the great 1960’s British tradition “The Hot Potato”, directed by Tim Leweston. Belgian production house Skyline chose again for our studios to record the second season of TV series “De Rodenburgs”.

Water stage

For more info or a customised offer, contact our team. You are always welcome for a personalised tour of the Eurocam Film Studios. www.eurocamfilmstudios.be · Fabriekstraat 38 · 2547 LINT (Belgium) · studios@euro-cam.com · T +32 (0)3 454 20 10

The initial idea of filming in Chile was abandoned because of a lack of co-production funds, and Vandekeybus turned to Brazil. Plans were made, but after 18 months the production partnership in Brazil fell apart as well.

In the meantime his Flemish producer, Bart Van Langendonck from Savage Film, had had a positive experience shooting in South Africa, so Vandekeybus went there to scout locations, eventually settling on Durban. ‘It’s very tropical, and visually very interesting, with a big Indian community,’ he explains.

Even so, a production in South Africa will involve challenges, for instance finding younger cast members. ‘I have to find a theatre school for kids where they can learn to act,’ he explains. At the same time, this is one of the project’s positive impacts.

‘There’s a social impact on the people with whom you work, so it’s not just a project were we arrive, film and then leave.’

monkey sandwich stories While working on Galloping Mind, Vandekeybus has had to deal with many preconceptions about his abilities, given his background in dance. ‘People said that I was a good director for images and I could edit and choreograph images and music, but could I let people speak? So I said: OK, I’ll write a project when people only speak. That was Monkey Sandwich.’

This feature-length film is based around urban myths, known in Dutch as ‘broodjeaapverhalen’, or ‘monkey sandwich stories’. Its three sections are linked by the presence of English actor Jerry Killick (who also has one of the main roles in Galloping Mind) although it is not entirely clear if he is the same character in each case.

In the first section Killick plays an obsessive, tyrannical opera director, imposing his will on his company, to hilarious effect. ‘It’s like a Dogme film,’ Vandekeybus says.

In a second section, Killick’s character has set up his own community, establishing a village on land created by the merging of two rivers into one. But the engineering work is unstable and a flood washes away the village, including his young family. In the third section, Killick’s character goes in search of his unborn son, discovering him in different disguises.

Once again Vandekeybus linked his film to the stage, projecting it in a theatre while a lone dancer performed in front of the screen.

But the ultimate aim is for Monkey Sandwich to appear in cinemas or at film festivals, such as Venice which selected the film for its Monkey Sandwich Orizzonti programme.

impulses and energies At present Vandekeybus is busy with his stage work, with projects lined up until June 2012.

After then he plans to devote himself entirely to making Galloping Mind. Beyond that he wants to work much more in film, but without completely abandoning live performance.

‘I’m very productive in performance, so I can scale back, but a well-financed film still takes three years to write and put together, so it is good to have two professions,’ he says. ‘I’ve been making Galloping Mind for a long time, but I made other films in-between and I’ve done lots of other work, so in this way I’m not frustrated.’

Although completion of Galloping Mind is still some way off, he is already thinking of the future.

‘I have a story in mind that I’m starting to write in outline, but I also wouldn’t mind adapting a book. That might be faster, because writing a story is a long journey.’

His working method is partly to blame. ‘I don’t follow rules. I follow impulses and energies,’ he admits. ‘But I like this chaotic way of working, and then to purify the story.’

He doesn’t have a particular book in mind for adaptation, but since one of his next stage projects is a version of the Oedipus myth, the classics spring to mind. ‘There is a big potential in the classics,’ he says. ‘It’s not so fashionable now – Pasolini was 30 or 40 years ago – but if you can do a classic story in your own way, then why not?’ 

Wim Vandekeybus (°1963)* (2011) – MONKEY SANDWICH (2007) – HERE AFTER (2005) – BLUSH (2002) – IN SPITE OF WISHING AND WANTING (2000) – NASMUCH *Selected filmography

www.flanderslab.be

41

Don Quixote is a name that everyone recognises. The hero of Miguel De Cervantes’ classic early 17th Century novel about the day-dreaming hidalgo has inspired many movies… close to 200 at the last reckoning. Writer-director Didier Volckaert is revisiting the story of the ‘Man Of La Mancha’, but his film, Quixote’s Island, promises to be in a very different register from previous adaptations of Quixote.

Don Quixote

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Remixed

Quichote's Island Text Geoffrey Macnab Portrait Bart Dewaele

Didier Volckaert is at pains to point out that he isn’t making ‘a typical Don Quixote film’ with an ‘old man on a horse’ tilting at windmills. He has re-fashioned the story for the present day. His version of Quixote is a rite of passage tale about a troubled youngster, San, who ‘has difficulties in his relationship with the outside world.’ This kid has the odds stacked against him. His mother has died of cancer. His father, a crisis manager, is always travelling for work.

‘He has this bubble that he created,’ Volckaert reflects of his protagonist. ‘One day he falls in love with a girl, which means the bubble bursts open.’

The object of the boy’s affection is a femme fatale (played by

Eline Kuppens): she is two years older than him and knows infinitely more about the dark side of life. ‘She did it all! She did the drugs. She had the boyfriend. She was pregnant.

She had the abortion.’

In most Quixote adaptations, ‘La Dulcinea’ is portrayed as a pretty young ingénue. In fact, in the novel, she is a plainlooking peasant. That’s not how Volckaert is portraying her but he cites it as an example of the tension between Cervantes’ original text and the way it has been interpreted by filmmakers over the years.

The anti-hero of Quixote’s Island is too shy and too awkward to make much headway with the aloof and mysterious

nter view

woman. At school, he likes to hide away in the toilets. Locked away in a tiny cubicle, he can keep the outside world at bay. Here, a figure appears before him who ‘knows everything about love and solving problems.’ This is Quixote, who takes him on a journey toward adulthood.

unsettling

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The settings and characters may have little to do with Don Quixote as he is usually imagined on screen. However, Volckaert insists, the themes chime with those in Cervantes’ novel.

The boy is no Sancho Panza. He doesn’t want to go out on adventures with this strange character who mentors him. Nonetheless, Volckaert is probing away at such familiar Quixoatian themes as romantic longing, the gap between reality and illusion, the transition between youth and adulthood, and the need that young and old alike have for escape from their everyday world.

As the director notes, Don Quixote ‘is one of the most important western stories we have.’

School kids and adults are generally aware of Quixote but few of them have actually read the book – or have got beyond the famous early passage that describes the elderly knight tilting at the windmills. ‘It was a good starting point because you are starting from something that everybody knows… but what they know about it is very little,’ Volckaert explains the paradox of the Quixote myth. The world knows him as a comical and absurd figure. However, the true story is much more unsettling.

‘When I read the book, I was surprised by how complex and how contemporary it really is,’ Volckaert muses. ‘It is not about a guy just fighting windmills. It is a contemporary book about the difference between constructing reality and deciding which reality you should follow. You have choices. That, for me, is what Quixote says: yes, you can make choices and these choices will decide who you are. For a young boy who is a coward, it is very daunting to have to make choices.’

‘For me, cinema is more than telling stories. It is also a visual sensation’

The director emphasizes that his film is not directly autobiographical. He wasn’t a lonely, cowardly kid like San. Volckaert doesn’t come from an artistic background. His father was a scientist, working in the field of food inspection.

The future filmmaker grew up watching movies like Mad Max, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner but was equally influenced by

© Bart Dewaele

perseverance

Quixote's Island

‘We have a very big tradition of surrealism and of doing things with little money’

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Japanese animation. He ended up studying audiovisual art at the Sint-Lukas film school in Brussels.

Quixote’s Island is Volckaert’s first dramatic feature.

However, he has extensive experience in the documentary field. A Dog Of Flanders – Made In Japan, his 2007 doc codirected with An van. Dienderen, explored the worldwide cult that has grown up around the sentimental Victorian novel, A Dog Of Flanders, about an impoverished Flemish orphan boy and his pet dog. Thanks to TV series and films, the story is cherished in particular by the Japanese, who make pilgrimages to Antwerp to visit the locations in which it is set.

Volckaert’s most recent documentary White Shadow (2009) was set in the Antarctic. It wryly observed that every part of the world has now been discovered. The director points out that instead of striving to be the ‘first’ at some remote location, documentary makers and explorers now often cherish the fact that they are the ‘last’ to see it unspoiled.

One surprising fact that he learned during his time in the Antarctic was just how much penguins smelled. He was also

startled by how noisy it was. Wherever he went, there were engines rumbling or the click of tourists’ cameras. Even in such a far-flung and frozen location, he couldn’t find true solitude.

For all his success in the documentary field, Volckaert was determined to make the transition into dramatic storytelling.

‘I always wanted to make fiction film. I just took the long way to get there,’ the director reflects.

One trait he shares with Don Quixote is perseverance. It has taken him a small eternity to get Quixote’s Island to the screen but, no, he never even considered for a moment abandoning the project. Once he starts something, he proclaims, he keeps going.

‘I wanted to make a specific kind of cinema that I believed in,’ he states. ‘For me, cinema is more than telling stories.

It is also a visual sensation.’

freewheeling originality Quixote’s Island was produced by Viviane Vanfleteren’s

www.flandersimage.com

Vivi Film, the production company whose past projects include the much feted animated films The Triplets Of Belleville and Brendan And The Secret Of Kells. This is a film that has had a very long gestation. It’s 17 years since Volkaert first had the idea for a Quixote-based film. The director credits Vanfleteren, who has been on board the project for a decade, with sticking by him at a time when other producers were wary of committing. ‘It’s not a coincidence that I have found a producer who has her roots in animation film. She was much more open-minded and saw the potential and real worth,’ he suggests. ‘She saw it was possible.’

The script has undergone many transformations over the years. Vanfleteren brought the director together with screenwriter Peter Vandekerckhove, who helped him streamline his original treatment.

With Vanfleteren’s support, Volckaert was able to recruit some top collaborators, among them cinematographer Danny Elsen whose credits include Loft and The Memory Of A Killer, editor Matyas Veress, fresh from Jaco Van Dormael’s

epic Mr Nobody, and leading Dutch actor Jeroen Willems whose credits range from the musical 'Brel' to Oceans 12.

They were lured by the ambition and freewheeling originality of the film, which combines 35mm with digital and even some moments of animation. In spite of a relatively modest budget, the filmmakers shot key sequences in the Dominican Republic, which stood in for Quixote’s Island paradise.

Tiemen Van Haver, who plays San, is an extrovert and outspoken personality. Even so, Volckaert had the hunch that he would excel as a shy and repressed teenager. ‘The funny thing was that after he was cast he said “you’ll never believe it but I have a big tattoo on my back of Don Quixote!”’ The film is in post-production and will be ready by the early autumn.

So what now? Having spent well over a decade getting Quixote’s Island off the ground, Volckaert hopes his future projects will be easier to finance. ‘There is a place for this kind of cinema and in Belgium, we are well placed to make it.

In all the other arts, we have a very big tradition of surrealism and of doing big things with little money,’ he declares. 

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46

Brussels Revisited Text Geoffrey Macnab

Portrait Bart Dewaele

nter view

Welcome Home, Tom Heene’s debut feature, began as three interlinked short films, 3 x Lila. The project is set in Brussels, the city where the director is based.

At night, a car carrying some spoiled young ‘Eurocrats’ to a party, crashes into a bicyclist. She is badly hurt. This is Lila, a young woman recently returned to Belgium from travels abroad. Fiercely independent, she is in the process of splitting up with her boyfriend Benjamin, even if she is still as physically attracted to him as ever. We see her arriving at the airport in Brussels and accompanying

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an Iranian man in the bus to the city centre. He hasn’t been in the city for years and is bewildered by how it has changed, with its new array of skyscrapers and glass-fronted office blocks.

Welcome Home The basis was seeing Brussels as a map of trajectories that cross each other,’ Heene says of the Short Cuts-style structure of Welcome Home. 'I’ve lived 20 years in Brussels. People leave and people come back… the film is close to how I feel about this town.’

If Welcome Home is a love letter to Brussels, it is a very barbed one. The city is in a constant state of flux. This is underlined by the different languages used by the people in the film (English, Dutch, French) by the coming and going of the characters and by the transformations in the buildings. The Iranian man, revisiting Brussels after so long away, tells Lila that the architect who has built all these impersonal, modernist structures should be ‘whipped’.

Does the director feel the Iranian’s anger about the ways in which the city has changed? ‘You know, I was born in Ghent which they say in the "Lonely Planet" is one of Belgium’s best-kept secrets,’ Heene reflects on his upbringing ‘I adore going back. My family is still there but… I am unable to go and live there!’ Brussels,

‘Cinema, in a way, is dying. Arthouse cinema is searching for a way for surviving… maybe at a certain moment, it will be online’

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Welcome Home

Heene elaborates, is a much darker metropolis than Ghent. It is a place ‘where all nationalities cross.’ He talks of his love/hate relationship with the city. ‘It’s the arena for a lot of confrontations and tensions.’ Whatever else, Brussels is potentially a rich and fascinating place in which to make movies – and Heene believes that Belgian filmmakers haven’t always taken advantage of the stories in their backyards.

today’s sexuality The settings of Welcome Home range from Brussels by night to the small apartment where Lila (Manah Depauw) and her boyfriend (Kurt Van den Driessche) have their ferociously intense reunion. This segment of the story features anguished and aggressive sex between the lovers who have such different expectations about one another. The final part of the story is set in a Brussels hospital.

Heene describes Lila as a modern woman, one of ‘the daughters of the feminists.’ On the one hand, she is liberated, individualistic and determined not to be dependent on a man. On the other, she craves security and intimacy. This part of the film ‘is all about today’s sexuality – how a woman lives her sexuality and how a man lives his sexuality. Maybe I wanted to show an image of a couple which was not this classical “man wants to fuck and woman wants a man for a baby”.’

For a young western woman in her mid-20s, Heene suggests, ‘the situation is very complex.’ Should she want to be in a relationship for the rest of her life or to enjoy the freedom that being on her own brings?

The scene in the apartment, which was shot over four nights, is raw and unsettling. Heene captures the contradictory feelings of the lovers: their desire for one another but also their animosity and suspicion.

After an early screening, Heene was told by an acquaintance that the scene between Lila and her boyfriend was ‘very respectful’ because it turned gender stereotypes on their head. For once, the woman was not simply the object of desire.

She was the one pursuing and roughly seducing the man.

‘We are not there to show the ass or the breasts of the woman. No, it’s like they are two bodies together… We must not be afraid of showing how things go. Let’s find a way of showing how strong a woman can be at that moment also.’

Jan Fabre Kurt Van den Driessche has worked extensively with artist and choreographer Jan Fabre – one reason that he was comfortable with a role as fraught and physically demanding as that of the boyfriend. Depauw, an artist and a director as well as an actress, likewise confronted the challenge head on.

‘For them, it was an intriguing moment naturally. They really wanted to succeed in this,’ Heene says of his two leads. ‘I had a lot of trust… more than my crew in fact! I wanted the actors to go for it and try stuff out. As they are very good actors but also physical, it worked. It was very emotional for both of them. They dug very deep.'

nter view i www.flandersimage.com Welcome Home may be Heene’s first feature as a director but he has been active in Belgian film culture for many years. He was production manager on the Brussels part of The Five Obstructions, the project hatched by Jorgen Leth and Lars Von Trier. He has also worked as assistant director and production assistant on many other films. Among his recent credits are Alex Stockman’s Pulsar and Olivier Smolders’ Nuit noire. Meanwhile, he has created several media installations, among them the ongoing project DarkMatr, which investigates the way ‘data from the web and our physical world can be merged and presented in a total user experience.’ He has juggled his own intensely personal projects with his work for other directors.

Heene remembers that when he was working on The Five Obstructions, he was already thinking about making films in Brussels. ‘It took a long time before I did my own projects. One way or another, I fell into production management and assistant directing. I suppose I have a talent for organizing and for keeping budgets.’

When he finally got round to shooting his own films, he couldn’t help but ask himself: ‘jeez, why didn’t I start before!’ He adds that his own experiences gave him an added respect for the work of the crew. ‘Filmmaking is really collaboration. You do not do it alone. I am not the only artist.’

Now in his early 40s, Heene went to film school at Sint-Lukas when he was very young in the late 1980s. Once there, he switched from film directing to experimental video. ‘Immediately, when you are at film school, they push you toward a kind of classical filmmaking where I didn’t feel very at home,’ he recalls. ‘I always had an affinity with video. I am in love with narrative film but also with the more experimental side of image and sound.’

With his background in video, Heene has been well placed to investigate the way that storytelling has been changing in the digital age.

‘Cinema, in a way, is dying,’ the director says. ‘Arthouse cinema is searching for a way for surviving at the moment… maybe at a certain moment, it will be online.

Maybe that will be the only way: have your movie on iTunes and let people pay e5 for it – but I think we still are social animals.’

His own passion for cinema began when he was a kid in Ghent, watching movies at Studio Skoop or watching films – ‘the forbidden thing’ - on a colour TV in the attic. In his teenage years, he was a big admirer of films like Alan Parker’s Birdy, Leos Carax’s Mauvais sang and Wim Wenders’ Wings Of Desire and Paris, Texas.

Welcome Home is being made with the support, over time, of several production outfits: Tomas Leyers’ Minds Meet, Corridor (where the film was championed by Kaat Camerlynck) and La Parti Production.

Now, Heene is determined to make up for lost time. ‘I was 18 when I went to film school,’ he says. ‘I am not so prodigious because I only did my first film now – and I am 41.’

Once his feature debut is fully completed, the director will be looking to make more films – and, yes, they will almost certainly be set in Brussels. 

49

Under the Influence

Alexis Destoop Text Ian Mundell PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

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Alexis Destoop is interested in films that take him on a journey, perhaps to a different place but equally to a different state of mind. 'When I love a film, it's because it takes me somewhere,' he says. 'It doesn't really matter if I understand where it takes me. If I've been somewhere, that's enough.' He is aiming for the same effect in his own work.

the great castrator Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky are also strong influences, particularly Tarkovsky’s trilogy of films Solaris, Mirror and Stalker. ‘Those two filmmakers are related in having an outspoken visual aesthetic, being really involved with the interior life of their characters yet without doing classical psychology,’ he explains.

However Destoop is aware that these lofty inspirations can be inhibiting as well. ‘A producer friend of mine refers to Tarkovsky as the great castrator, and there’s something to that.’

Robert Bresson has provided Destoop with ideas about how to develop a cinematic language, as has John Cassavetes in films such as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Love Streams. ‘It’s not the subject matter so much as the way he does it and the absolute conviction, the necessity that underlies these films.’

For his most recent film, Destoop cites Werner Herzog as a model, particularly for his approach to films drawing on contemporary events, such as Lessons of Darkness or The Wild Blue Yonder. ‘He starts as if it was a documentary and then somehow twists it and transposes it through very simple techniques, such as his voice or elements of fiction,’ he explains.

Thus Kairos is not just about images of the desert or documenting ruined communities, but aims to say something about colonial heritage and the exploitation of natural resources.

This is a theme Destoop wants return to in future. ‘My next work should form a diptych with Kairos, and further develop the subject of the resource industry, against the foil of a speculative science fiction whereby there’s a problem with language,’ he says.

As for future projects, he has a particular interest in ghost stories. ‘I’m assisted by the likes of Henry James in my quest for “hauntings”,’ he explains cryptically. 

These are some of the works Alexis Destoop currently gets inspired by: BOOK

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by Roberto Bolano

nfluence

inspirational

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Obsessed with images from an early age, Destoop studied photography in order to gain a better understanding of the image frame. While his initial idea was to go on to film school, he was drawn instead to theory, studying art history and philosophy at university.

He continued to take photographs and got involved in the performing arts, experiencing a revelation when he first took charge of a stage performance. ‘I really liked it, but I realised immediately that this was not my medium,’ he recalls. ‘My questions were not about live performance but about the image. So I picked up video.’

He made video installations, dealing with duration and the impact it has on bodies, but as in the performing arts these involved neutral spaces. A desire to shoot something in the ‘real’ world led his first short film, I’m Happy Men, in which two lovers roam an empty, abandoned world, speaking cryptic dialogue.

Dialogue was stripped away in his next short film, Pandora, leaving the actors with only their non-verbal resources and the locations to work with. And in Kairos, his new medium-length film, a science fiction story about a shortage of time unfolds in the Australian outback.

In all three films Destoop says he is looking for the cinematic equivalent of the interaction between viewer and image that occurs when someone steps into a gallery space. ‘I’m interested in a cinema that works when these two things come together,’ he says, ‘where the viewer is of absolute importance, adding something to what is given by the artist.’

Rather than using visual effects, he wants to provoke this interaction through experiments in storytelling. ‘The cinema that really engages me deals with the limits of narration,’ he says.

‘The only way that it can go forward is by involving me as a viewer.’

One early influence in this endeavour was Jim Jarmusch, whose Down by Law introduced Destoop to the possibility of an alternative kind of cinema. ‘The action is stripped down to a strict minimum and all that is left is this situation,’ he explains. ‘The plot points become unimportant. What becomes important are the human moments in between.’

Robert Frank was also an inspiration, both for his documentary photography and ‘beat’ films such as Pull My Daisy. ‘They are made with friends, around simple ideas and with simple means,’ Destoop says. ‘I discovered these films with great pleasure.’

In turn this was an introduction to American experimental cinema, where he found structuralist film interesting but not entirely convincing. ‘The person who gave me a way out of that was Stan Brakhage, who has a structuralist approach but endows it with so much emotion and subjectiveness.’

Film

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

DVD

3 Women

by Robert Altman

Music

Supersilent

Art

Walid Raad by the Atlas Group

51

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cons From Cannes to Karlovy Vary, over Busan …

Here are just a few snaphots of flemish filmmakers attending the finest of film fests around the globe.

joys the isibly en v m a k tional Ros Interna haël R. ry ic a t, V M r y v re debu Karlo Directo is featu ing the h a f w f o o o ll n t fo fron tatio Q&A l presen e film in a th v ti d s e e w Film F fest sho . d. The ditorium u a t Bullhea a e s 0 0 1,2 packed

a! ou Um nnes, y a e W u e tr M ame r wish c r jo a to m c e A dir suit 46 im o w h S w r fo op s Desto t Wanne rman a u h T a t h ig met Um n sing nes clo n t a a C th e n th arlier o rt party. E o h s ’s estoop l night, D Specia e th n o w d ha ard.

Jury Aw

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e Bento is x, whos k ir D d for th r Piete selecte s a , s w e ri n ata Can Monog ation in d n fo th é in ou year’s C some m und for ro s at a a ie lt s k ia loo spec n ia s A g waterin party. s e n n Ca

r Sahim s helme e ro e H t the and of nd Bes appy L t Film a h s e ar’s ly e B ib y e is is Av at th ows th n h o s w fa li e a h Omar K awards stival. graphy Film Fe s to a rt o m h e S Cin tional Interna Busan

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ent to pres In town t re debu his featu lected , se Oxygen vy of Karlo as part 10 ariety’s Vary’s V to irectors Euro D me, m progra h tc a W Van r Hans directo rano p nd so Nuffel a rtner) (and pa s luwaert a Elise C e th in ate particip all. photo c

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yer éric Bo er Fréd p n p d to t Van e nigh er Gust rs’ Fort k . a to e c m c e n ir lm D nfere ish fi Cannes g Flem ress co n p u d o ir y B s ce e Blue introdu (r) at th Berghe

st ird’s Gu . Blue B ip nnes d a W le ) and Doub (l e h rg ing n Be 46) hav Van de wimsuit nes’ (S n p a o C Desto ne of o n o ll stro . a quiet eaches rious b to o n t mos

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-fans

President and Co-Chair of Summit Entertainment Patrick Wachsberger talks about his favourite films from Flanders, about his connection with Belgium and about his adventures in the local film distribution scene.

The Alzheimer Case

Patrick Wachsberger

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I was born in Paris but my father, Nat Wachsberger, who is no longer with us, was born in Antwerp. He is the first connection I have with Belgium. Half of my DNA is from Belgium! His parents were quite old when he was born. He left Belgium during the war and came to the United States. He was working at the studios, at Fox, producing and importing American movies to Europe. He spoke Flemish but no, I don’t speak Flemish.

When I came to the United States in 1977, I decided to try to do something good.

Belgium was probably one of the smallest territories at that time. I decided with a partner in Belgium to acquire for distribution some important movies. At that time, there was a very serious competitor (Georges D. Heylen, ed.) who happened to control all the exhibition in Antwerp, which is a very important city. The company was called Excelsior. They controlled 90% if not more of independent distribution in Belgium. I decided to become their competitor. God they hated me! I got really lucky with some really amazing movies. For the most part, we did really well. I bought Apocalypse Now, Once Upon A Time In America, Escape From New York, The Postman Always Rings Twice… They had to play our movies in Antwerp because our movies were so big. Thank god I had some friends in Brussels who were exhibitors and really helping us. That was also the very beginning of the Kinepolis chain.

I bought the second Rambo film. Then it started becoming expensive… but everything is relative. I was paying $250,000 or $300,000 to $325,000 when I bought Once Upon A Time In America. That was for Belgium only, not Holland. There was no DVD at the time. It was a theatrical market.

There have been some Belgian films that I’ve liked. I really

Loft

loved Erik Van Looy’s Loft. We had conversations with producer Steve Golin about doing a remake. He had the rights or an option to acquire the rights. We didn’t get any further than talking about it. I think I saw Loft as a screener.

I really liked the concept, I liked the movie, I liked the actors.

It was a really good movie. Stylistically, it was really great.

The other film I really loved was Van Looy’s The Alzheimer Case (aka The Memory Of A Killer). A friend of mine acquired the remake rights and developed a few drafts with Focus. I think the option lapsed. Morgan Freeman was supposed to do it… and I think Clint Eastwood was supposed to direct it at one point.

We distributed Fly Me To The Moon, the 3D animated film from Belgian filmmaker Ben Stassen, domestically. On the last trip I had in Belgium, I went to his offices in Brussels where I saw Sammy's Adventures - The Secret Passage.

At Summit, we love movies and look at movies from all over the world. As far as the US domestic market is concerned, foreign movies are really difficult but as far as international is concerned, that is not an issue. If international rights are available, there is no issue of us at Summit saying ‘oh, my god, it’s a foreign language movie. We won’t take it’.

I have to say that we are blessed to have amazing distributors in Benelux. Maybe because the relationship is so close, we’re really trying to do the best to help them with the marketing, to provide them with talent. They are generally speaking working above expectations.  As told to Geoffrey Macnab

TAKE 21 | Summer 2011 | e 3.99

Where to shoot next?

Cover Issaka Sawadogo by Bart Dewaele CREDITS Editor Christian De Schutter Deputy Editor + Art Direction Nathalie Capiau Deputy Editor / Digital Karel Verhelst Sub editors John Adair, An Ratinckx Contributors Geoffrey MacNab, Karl Meersman, Ian Mundell, Henry Womersley All other stills copyrighted by the respective producers Design

Print Wilda NV Subscriptions By post: € 10 / year (three issues) Info: flandersimage@vaf.be This magazine is also available for free via the App Store, and can be consulted on issuu.com 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 www.flandersimage.com

Are you looking for the most breathtaking locations, both historical and contemporary, combined with highly skilled craftspeople, cost-efficient and innovative post-production facilities and studios, possibly the most producer-friendly Tax Shelter System in the world and a brand-new e 25,000 Location Grant competition?

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Special thanks to: Myriam De Boeck, Sonja De Boeck, Dirk Cools, Fabian Desmicht, Pierre Drouot, Siebe Dumon, Paul Embrechts, Tom Van der Elst, Hans Everaert, Katrien Maes, Karin Pays, The PR Factory, Karla Puttemans, Dirk Schoenmaekers, Sander Vanhellemont, Helga Vinck, Frédéric Young and all the filmmakers and producers who helped us with this issue.

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