For six years already, Sabzian has been inviting a guest to contemplate the state of cinema today, craft a text that illuminates cinema's essence and potential significance, and choose a film that connects to it. For this year’s State of Cinema event, Sabzian and Bozar welcome French filmmaker Alice Diop. Diop's cinematic endeavours focus on the individuals she is “conditioned to reject”, aiming to secure their position within film heritage. Alongside her contribution, Diop has selected Sarah Maldoror’s film Sambizanga. Join us at Bozar on Thursday. 

Despite Jarmusch never having visited Memphis prior to creating Mystery Train (1989), the film remains a compelling portrayal of the city. Jarmusch captures the city through the lens of an outsider who’s enchanted by its musical legacy (with icons like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison recording there) and  seeks to uncover the echoes of its influence. Split into three narratives, the film unfolds as a canvas of Jarmusch’s musings, exploring themes of travel, solitude, crime, and the supernatural. Roger Ebert wrote that the difference between Jarmusch and many other indie filmmakers is that “he chews before swallowing.” 

On Sunday afternoon, delve into the haunting reality of a Depression-era dance marathon with They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) at De Cinema. Sydney Pollack's raw realism captures the desperate, muted shuffling of contestants spiralling into exhaustion and collapse as Jane Fonda’s and Michael Sarrazin's characters endure gruelling hours of dance in pursuit of a cash prize. Pollack creates a microcosm within the ballroom, where characters devoid of pasts or futures exist solely in this relentless competition, unable to escape despite their growing weariness and the futility of their endeavour accumulating with every passing hour.

This week’s film selection meanders through the eighties, and specifically the place of women in those years. 

In 1987, as the GDR teetered on the brink of collapse, filmmaker Helke Misselwitz embarked on a train journey from South to North Germany, capturing the lives of women she met along the way. In Winter adé (1988), her lens delicately unveils the inner worlds of these women from different backgrounds, reflecting on decades of a journey towards gender equality. Join us for the Sabzian Milestones screening of this remarkable piece on Tuesday at Cinema RITCS.

Thanks to De Cinema, those in Antwerp this week can delve into Krótki Film o Milosci [A Short Film About Love] (1988), Krzysztof Kieslowski's exploration of obsession and voyeurism. In this dark, twisted romantic comedy-drama, 19-year-old postal worker Tomek becomes entranced by his older neighbour Magda, igniting a complex relationship. Developed from an episode of Kieslowski's legendary ten-part television series, Dekalog, the film navigates the thin (and dangerous) line between love and curiosity with sharp wit and irony. Booty calls and biblical references turn out not to be mutually exclusive. 

On Saturday, we'll journey back to the early eighties with a screening of Claudia von Alemann’s Die Reise nach Lyon, better known as Blind Spot (1981), at Beursschouwburg. Elisabeth, a young historian, travels to Lyon, where she follows in the footsteps of 19th century socialist and feminist Flora Tristan. The screening concludes Cut the Line, Erika Balsom’s programme of films opening up a conversation about feminism, historiography and nonlinear temporalities of remembrance. The film will be followed by a talk with Balsom and Anouk De Clercq.
 

This week, let’s dive into some (cinematic) controversies together.

On Tuesday, CINEMATEK screens The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), Sergej Parajanov’s exploration of the life and work of 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. The film would be received as highly subjective and hermetic both in the East and later in the West, partly because of Parajanov’s appropriation of a folkloric tradition. Today, the film is considered to be one of the most extraordinary visual poems in film history.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are films that get more controversial with time. CINEMATEK is screening Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) twice this week. The film is a meditation on faith, holiness and the nature of evil by one of cinema’s most notoriously tough directors, Maurice Pialat, and with none other than Gérard Depardieu in the leading role. It’s safe to say that Pialat’s methods of directing as well as his all-time muse, Dépardieu, did not age well. To his film being booed at Cannes at the time, Pialat simply responded: “If you don’t like me, I can tell you that I don’t like you either.” So perhaps he wouldn’t care anyway. 

To compensate for all of that masculinity, round off your week by (re-)watching Ridley Scott’s 1991 classic, Thelma & Louise, in Buda. Or should we say, Callie Khouri’s classic, as most critics agree Scott would have gotten absolutely nowhere without Khouri’s iconic screenplay. Not only the authorial question, but especially the plot of this road movie is sure to give you some interesting feminist food for thought because perhaps this film is also full to the brim with toxic masculinity. And, as some critics ask, should women’s emancipation really include guns and robbery? Julien Allen responds to this worry in Reverse Shot: maybe for once we should just allow women “to laugh and drink and fuck and misbehave—to share in life’s glories”, with or without guns. 

This week’s agenda selection is highlighting films that study some very particular identities, the desire for them or the excruciating lack thereof. 

In Fargo (1996), the Coen brothers’ first mainstream success and already considered a classic today,  the incompetent characters stumbling around in the Minnesotan Midwest (the Coen’s homeland) seem to have fallen victim to the eternal ‘American Dream’ but are completely incapable of moving an inch closer to it. A Clinton era black comedy about weird people that feels so surprisingly sincere it can hold up next to the Coen’s later, iconic works like The Big Lebowski (1998) or No Country for Old Men (2007). Not to forget Frances McDormand’s Oscar winning performance as the spirited, pregnant policewoman, Marge Gunderson.

At this year’s Berlinale, cinematographer Hélène Louvart won the Silver Bear for her “Outstanding Artistic Contribution” to Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy (2023), which is currently being screened at (among other venues) flagey. While Alex, the Belarusian character, joins the Foreign Legion in France and clings to a confused sense of hope to find a new family and a European identity, Jomo, the Nigerian, fights for the survival and durability of his people in the Niger Delta and is ready to die to defend his ideas, all the while dreaming of becoming a dancer. With its choice of topic and of soundtrack, Abbruzzese delivers a brave homage to Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999).

Many would argue that Orson Welles also delivered an “outstanding artistic contribution” when he made Franz Kafka’s iconic 1925 novel The Trial into a film in 1962. Some would even say that he’s the only one who ever got Kafka right. Alienating social structures, claustrophobic bureaucracy, and an individual participating in his own destruction – what more could you want on a Sunday afternoon at Cinema Palace?

This week’s agenda selection highlights films that investigate the act of leaving a place, the emotions of returning to it, or the attempts of getting to know it completely. Always connected with histories, personal and global.

On Monday, for the final screening of their retrospective on filmmaker and influential feminist theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha, CINEMATEK is screening her 2015 essay work Forgetting Vietnam in which she commemorates the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. In this exploration of the history and present of Vietnam, she has only one request for her viewers: “Please follow me. Trust me, for deep feeling and understanding require total commitment.”

On Tuesday, CINEMATEK is treating us with a screening of their own restoration of an iconic Chantal Akerman film. At the age of 21, Akerman moved from Brussels to New York City, where she lived “like a vagabond”. Some years later, after returning to Belgium and making our beloved Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Akerman created News from Home (1977). Long takes of New York City are set to a voice-over of Akerman reading the letters her mother sent while she was away. This screening is part of a “prelude” to the 10th edition of the Contour Biennale, curated by the Brussels production and distribution platform Auguste Orts. 

On three different days this week, you can travel to De Cinema in Antwerp to watch Elixir d’Anvers (1996) and have a – possibly disorienting – deep dive into the past of this city. The anthology film, supervised by the Belgian Fugitive Cinema filmmaker Robbe De Hert, consists of six parts of Antwerp history, real and fictional, seen through the eyes of Flemish and Dutch young directors. The whole thing is strung together by De Hert’s comic street interviews. 

This week, Ghent has taken over the agenda selection – and rightly so. On the occasion of Philippe Grandrieux’s directing of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, the long-awaited Opera Ballet Vlaanderen production that will premiere on Wednesday, three of his films are being screened in Flemish cinemas. Monday evening, Art Cinema OFFoff in Ghent is showing his 2002 La vie nouvelle on 35mm, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker. A more than adequate preparation for the five hour long “fever dream” Tristan und Isolde promises to be. 

No doubt a less disturbing but equally nourishing option would be to start your Sunday off with Abbas Kiarostami’s T’am e gilass [Taste of Cherry] (1997) at Ciné Rio in de Koer. Musician Ehsan Yadollahi, who grew up in Iran and studied traditional Iranian music for years, will provide a musical introduction for the film. All proceeds from the screening, which follows a ‘pay what you can’ system, will be donated in full to WomanLifeFreedomGent, an intersectional feminist and queer collective inspired by the Woman* Life Freedom Revolution in Iran. What better occasion to (re)watch a Sabzian favourite?

After following Mr. Badii through Tehran, and possibly after a little lunch, there should still be plenty of time to make it to the last screening on this week’s agenda. On Sunday afternoon, Art Cinema OFFoff is again bringing rarely screened experimental work to KASKcinema by showing Michael Snow’s 1974 mouthful of a film: Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (1974). The four-and-a-half-hour film consists of 26 successive scenes that all relate to sound/image relationships. Described by the filmmaker as a musical comedy, tongue-in-cheek that is, this early work of Snow is seen as one of his most stimulating.