This week’s selection is about loss and mourning. These three films deal with the transformative relation with those on the brink of death, the memory of those who are no longer there, and the rites around the dead body.
A series of films on death is running in Brussels at Nova Cinema, amongst which are three screenings of Des morts (1979) by Jean-Pol Ferbus, Dominique Garny and Thierry Zéno. The trio travelled almost two years around the world to document death rituals. Both poetic and brutal, the film is between an ethnological study of the morbid and cinema with a punch.
The contrast with The Mourning Forest (2007) by Naomi Kawase could not be greater. A soft, contemplative film on a nurse in an elderly home who is grieving for her dead child. A male resident of the nursing home who has dementia takes her to a forest, where there seems to be something to be found that is connected to his late wife.
The third film this week is by Pim de la Parra, a Dutch-Surinamese filmmaker who founded the film magazine Skoop during his studies at the Netherlands Film Academy. He produced the first Surinamese fiction production called Wan Pipel (1976), which was an attempt at post-colonial nation building and a promotion of religious diversity. A Surinamese-Dutch student returns to Paramaribo to spend time with his dying mother. While he is there, he falls in love with his home country and with a Hindustan girl.
