Conversation
27.03.2024
EN

In the following discussion, which took place in September 2023 in Bucharest during a masterclass that followed a screening of Costa’s latest short film, As Filhas do Fogo [The Daughters of Fire] (2023), Costa sketches an autobiography that is subjective (and thus, slightly incomplete). He discusses his experience of the Carnation Revolution as a teenager and his days as a student of history at the University of Lisbon, where his contract with the geographer and historian Orlando Ribeiro left a deep imprint on him. Describing his films up to his 2006 magnum opus, Juventude em marcha [Colossal Youth] (2006), Costa focused in particular on the revelatory experience of his second feature, Casa de Lava (1994), and the moment of rupture and revelation that was No quarto da vanda [In Vanda’s Room] (2000).

On Víctor Erice’s El sol del membrillo

Article
20.03.2024
EN

With its slow rhythm, focus on the mundane and struggle of finishing a single painting, Erice’s El sol del membrillo can be presented as a meditation on the passing of time, hovering between documentary and fiction. Its title, which was translated into English as Dream of Light (The Quince Tree Sun), refers to the sunny period in the autumn that coincides with the ripening of quinces. Both the filmmaker and his painter character attempt to capture the shifting light as it changes with the passing days.

The Cinema of Víctor Erice

Article
20.03.2024
EN

Cinema, for Erice, ages at the very moment of its birth, it never stops putting those first sensations at a distance. And there is no remedy for this loss, certainly not the one that would consist in reproducing something, as one places a sheet of tracing paper to reproduce a drawing. From his cinema Erice has banished forever the re-creation, pastiche, the incestuous and vain reference. Instead, he explores dream images, the imaginary, the empire of spectres and sometimes the captivating incarnation of Spirits.

27.03.2024
A COLLECTION OF 7 texts, 2 film pages
NL

Eind jaren zeventig maakte de Belgische theatermaker, acteur en auteur Jan Decorte (1950) twee speelfilms – Pierre (1976) en Hedda Gabler (1978), en enkele televisiefilms – (het verloren gegane) Nature morte (1976) en Witold Gombrowicz: voorvallen, avonturen (1977), een oeuvre getypeerd door filmische spaarzaamheid en lichtheid, gededramatiseerde theatraliteit en een afkeer van het spectaculaire.

Over Chantal Akermans toelatingsexamen aan INSAS

Article
20.03.2024
NL EN

Kan je in deze filmpjes zien wat voor cineaste Chantal Akerman zal worden? Misschien niet. De vier filmpjes zijn kleine vingeroefeningen, ze “vertellen” niets, gaan nergens over. Wat de filmpjes vooral reveleren is een zeker plezier in het filmmaken, in het kijken, en in het maken én organiseren van beelden.

Interview with Ula Stöckl

Conversation
20.03.2024
EN

My work “with” women also concerns the men with whom they live. For who could imagine women without their men? The women's movement is not just the province of women. At a time when women are completely without rights, we need the movement as an absolute necessity. Can men learn from us and begin to see their own misery at the same time that we women attempt to make films about emerging from our misery? If so, then the women's movement will have seen its time.

Interview with Helga Reidemeister

Conversation
20.03.2024
EN

Should women filmmakers continue to develop themselves and work without the political pressure of adapting to male norms, then it may be possible in ten or twenty years to reflect on what has emerged. Up to now, our films have been more or less first tries without the experience and depth of years of work. And a discussion about concepts might be fatal while there are still so many unexplored possibilities, so many experiments which must and will be attempted.

From 1950 to 1995

Article
13.03.2024
NL FR EN

“I was in Brussels, I didn’t like cinema at all, I thought it was for idiots, all they took me to see was Mickey Mouse or things like that... and then I saw Pierrot le fou and I had the impression that it spoke of our times, of what I felt. Before, it was always The Guns of Navarone. And I didn’t give a damn about those things. I don’t know, but it was the first time I had been moved by a film, and I was moved violently. And no doubt I wanted to do the same thing with films that would be mine.”

Traversing the Land of Cinema

13.03.2024
A COLLECTION OF 8 texts, 40 film pages, 2 events, 1 news item
NL FR EN

Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, producer, artist and writer born in Brussels.

Article
14.02.2024
EN

It’s up to Arab women, and especially Palestinian women, to take up the camera to show their true face, provided they haven’t adopted a system of values created by men (as happened a number of times with their European counterparts). They alone, without a doubt, can show that Palestinian women today resist as women always have in history, as citizens of a country wiped off the map and one half of a people who refuse to die, but also as all women of the world who suffer a double oppression.

NEWS
11.03.2024
NL EN

From Wednesday 27 March to Sunday 31 March, the twenty-third Courtisane Festival will take place in Ghent, Belgium. During the festival, Courtisane, a platform for film and audiovisual arts, will explore the relationships between image and world, aesthetics and politics, experimentation and engagement. Pieter-Paul Mortier, artistic director of the festival, guides us through this year’s programme.