Audiovisual Arts in Flanders

Erik Martens & Stoffel Debuysere

'Cinema' today

What is the meaning of 'cinema' today? In the aftermath of its centenary the realm of cinema is continuously expanding, scattering across various media, technologies and motives. As the analogue image is increasingly replaced by its digital counterpart, people are producing and distributing more films than ever before, but at the same time, our ways of watching and listening have become fragmented and individualized. 'Cinema' no longer holds a specific place of its own: it is everywhere, mixed with and integrated into other cultural forms, in cinema multiplexes, theatre venues, arts centres and museums, on classic film screens, television or computer screens, in the street, on iPods and mobile phones. The digital revolution has not only provided new opportunities for production and distribution, it is also deeply affecting imagery and narrative and the environment where they are visible: from interactive to immersive, from multi-screen to panoramic projection. In that context, (re)new(ed) mutual conciliation between cinema and visual arts is apparent. Much like anywhere else, Flemish artists, filmmakers, festivals - major (Ghent) as well as minor ones (Artefact, Courtisane, Contour,...) - and arts centres (Argos, Beursschouwburg, STUK, ...), are making attempts to reconcile the 'black box' and the 'white cube', cinema and museum.

Just as all this affects our perceptions and ideas about art and film, it also generates new meanings and insights that are gradually filtering through in the work of filmmakers and audiovisual artists.

As a user friendly, cheap and reproducible medium, video has, since the 1980s, had a profound influence on the exploration and transformation of audiovisual practices in Flanders, with cinematographic experimentation, personal storytelling and integrated image in spatial installations. But the electronic and digital image are no longer the exclusive playground for experiment. They have become the chosen vehicle for human imagination, a lingua franca that is constantly evolving and transforming both in vocabulary and grammar, and that has affected 'classic' filmmaking in Flanders as much as anywhere else. In Flanders, it may seem, imagination and creativity flourish as never before, in an unprecedented diversity, with 'classic' and 'innovative', 'artistic' and 'commercial' not only living side by side, but also intertwining and feeding each other; mainstream and arthouse fiction, classic creative and experimental documentary, hand-crafted and computer animation, narrative and non-narrative creation, television formats, video and media art. The Flemish audiovisual arts are young, dynamic, searching to cross frontiers and to explore new means of expression.

Belgian and Flemish

One of the old 'frontiers' to be crossed is that of 'Belgium'. In fact, there is no such thing as 'Belgian audiovisual arts' or 'Belgian film'. There are French speaking and Flemish creations, which, every now and then, come together in Brussels. The frontiers between Flemish and French speaking cinema are not merely linguistic (the official linguistic frontier was fixed in 1963), they are also political (federal state structure since 1964, with different legislations and policies) and, of course, cultural: Germanic in the North, Latin in the South.

Regionalising cultural (and consequently also audiovisual) policy during the 1960s caused the country's communities to drift away from each other. French speaking Belgian cinema easily finds its way in France. Cannes is, in many ways, a lot closer to Wallonia than to Flanders. International careers are more evident for French speaking than for Dutch (or Flemish) speaking films. Outside the Netherlands and Flanders (and, perhaps, Suriname and South Africa), Dutch (and Flemish) speaking cinema is 'foreign-language' cinema.

Surprisingly, the Flemish audiovisual community has never really associated itself with its Dutch colleagues - apart from a few exceptions, such as Hugo Claus. Officially there is no linguistic frontier between Flanders and the Netherlands. And yet, they 'are separated by the same language', as a result of a historical process: at the end of the 16th century, the Spanish expelled all Flemish Protestants to the North. 'Catholic Flanders' and 'Protestant Holland' became separated by religious, and in the long run, cultural frontiers. And even though the religious division has become obsolete, cultural relations between the two communities have never been evident. In filmmaking, co-operation predominantly consists of business agreements (co-production, financing): artistic co-operation is usually far less evident, considering the cultural differences. And even if attempts have been made to promote co-operation - the most recent being the 2004 agreement between the Dutch Film Fund and the Flemish Audiovisual Fund upon 6 annual Dutch-Flemish co-productions - there still are very few really 'Flemish-Dutch/Dutch-Flemish' films. On the other hand, there is intensive dialogue and reflection on cultural policy, education and the nature and evolution of the arts and industry (De Buren in Brussels and De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam).

Even though few prominent filmmakers have retained the 'Belgian' label - Henri Storck, André Delvaux and Marion Hansel - and in spite of the fact that an important institute such as the Royal Belgian Film Archive is still 'Belgian', there is no 'Belgian audiovisual identity'. The notion 'Belgian' is mainly an institutional or legal term, or a publicity label for international purposes. 'Belgium' has become the banner for formal occasions - international awards ceremonies (the Palmes d'Or for the Dardenne brothers, the Caméra d'Or for Jaco Van Dormael's Toto the Hero (Toto le héros), Academy Award nominations for Daens, Everybody Famous or Tanghi Argentini and the Academy Awards for Raoul Servais' Harpya, Nicole Van Goethem's A Greek Tragedy and Dirk Beliën's Gridlock (Faits Divers).

'Flemish Cinema'

Contrary to French speaking Belgium, Flanders has no real 'household names' - apart from Raoul Servais (animation) or Frans Buyens (documentary). A new generation of talented young filmmakers is emerging, hoping to establish themselves as accomplished filmmakers with a substantial body of work. But until then, there is no Flemish Pedro Almodovar, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Jean Rouch, Bill Viola or Kenneth Anger. This does not mean that Flemish artists and filmmakers are absent from the international platform, on the contrary. Flemish films - short and feature length - win prizes at festivals across the globe and are nominated for international awards (Tanghi Argentini, Girl, Someone Else's Happiness, BenX, The Kiss, Dichtvorm). On the other hand, a number of audiovisual artists whose work moves along the cutting edge between visual and audiovisual arts, have achieved great international recognition (Nicolas Provost, David Claerbout, Johan Grimonprez).

The recent evolution of the arts and industry in Flanders reveals an interesting paradox: on the one hand, they tend to receive more and more international acclaim, whereas, on the other, the industry explicitly aims at the local market. For the 'classic' formats (feature film, short fiction), international artistic co-operation (co-creation) is either difficult to achieve, or simply not a primary concern. And yet, at the same time, the Flemish arthouse film and some of the more 'experimental formats' are observed closely abroad and continuously win prizes and awards. The causes for this development are threefold: broadcasting, the tax shelter and the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds, since 2002 the official public financer for Flemish film).

The arrival of commercial networks at the end of the 1980s has been a major incentive. Until then television in Flanders had been the exclusive prerogative of a public broadcaster (VRT). One of the effects of this change in the landscape was that the new commercial broadcasters (VTM, VT4) triggered off a demand for Flemish spoken TV-fiction (soap, sitcom, miniseries and television drama). An indirect effect was that the public broadcaster re-shaped itself as a competitive and performance driven, publicly funded, network. This evolution created something like a real 'domestic market' in Flanders. The success of this commercial - and sometimes unashamedly populist - logic also affected filmmaking in Flanders. It 'inspired' production and resulted in a series of unequalled commercial successes: 2007 was a record breaking year for locally oriented Flemish films: about 1,135,000 tickets were sold for Flemish films. And even though the broadcasters were initially reluctant to co-finance or co-produce theatrical films (contrary to most countries in Europe, there is no obligation for broadcasters to invest in theatrical films), they have given various impulses and even triggered off film projects themselves. There has been a constant increase in the interaction: today, films are conceived as spin offs of successful television precedents. Box office success is predicted and calculated by television ratings. And even though television was the historical cause of huge drops in cinema attendance during the 1950s and 60s, it has become a vital incentive for Flemish theatrical movies. Television has become an important ally - both for entertainment films and for arthouse projects.

This evolution is noticeable in the history of production company MMG. During the 1980s, Erwin Provoost's company was responsible for a modest revival of Flemish cinema with Marc Didden's Brussels by Night (1983) and Dominique Deruddere's Crazy Love (1987). MMG then went on to produce two record breaking box office hits: Hector (933,000 tickets) and Koko Flanel (1,082,000 tickets), both featuring local comedian Urbanus. Both films were directed by Stijn Coninx, whose name is remembered for Daens, a historical drama about a socially committed priest which was nominated for the Best Foreign-language Academy Award. Coninx, unfortunately, would never equal again the public and critical acclaim received for that film. Back to MMG, which went on to focus on television fiction before turning back to feature film making in 2003. MMG's 2003 thriller The Alzheimer Case would become the biggest box office hit since the late 1980s: 720,000 tickets, making it the most successful film of the past decade. Director Erik Van Looy has been considered Flanders' major talent ever since, at least for quality entertainment. Alzheimer may have come as a surprise to cinemagoers, but for aficionados of MMG's television series Cops (Flikken) the film contained a series of familiar elements that 'lubricated' Alzheimer's theatrical career. In 2007 another MMG-series, about the comradeship of a small team of sea rescuers and their helicopter, would result in Storm Force (Windkracht 10), made on a big budget and with an arsenal of special effects that were unprecedented in Flemish cinema. Director Hans Herbots, however, did not manage to equal the success of Alzheimer.

Other companies found their way to the cinemagoer through television: Jan Verheyen made two theatrical features about the fortunes of a team of football friends based on the television series Team Spirit. Dominique Deruddere teamed up with television comic Chris Van den Durpel for his comedy A Chicken is no Dog (Firmin). In 2008 television company Woestijnvis will enter the theatres with Loft by Erik Van Looy, no longer the promising director of Alzheimer, but a very popular television character now.

All these are examples of fruitful interaction between cinema and television. December 2005 witnessed the theatrical release of Long Weekend (Verlengd weekend), the first film in a series of Faits Divers projects launched by the Flemish Audiovisual Fund in joint venture with commercial broadcaster VTM. The project offered (relatively) new talent a chance to make a television film on a modest budget. Though these films were conceived for (commercial) television broadcast, some proved to have enough potential for a theatrical release. And some even proved pretty successful at the box office : Long Weekend (Hans Herbots), about a socially motivated hijacking, and Hell in Tangier (De hel van Tanger) (Frank Van Mechelen) based on a true story about the misadventures of a Flemish truck driver in a Moroccan prison.

To be perfectly clear, television has proved itself vital not only for commercially oriented films; it has proved to be useful for 'films d'auteurs' just as well. The Faits Divers series includes projects in both categories. Flemish literature remains a useful source of inspiration. Jan Verheyen will be filming Cut Loose (Los), based on a novel by young Flemish writer Tom Naegels, and Felix van Groeningen will handle De helaasheid der dingen, a bestselling novel by Dimitri Verhulst.

The second incentive is the tax shelter, that allows private investors in film to earn back their money through tax deduction. Thanks to this system, films do not only get financed more easily, more films are being made. Still, corporations will prefer to invest on the basis of economical, rather than artistic, motives, and they will prefer financing commercially oriented films rather than art-oriented creations. On the surface, the tax shelter will, therefore, provide for more films on an industrial basis rather than enrich the artistic landscape. Still, it would be short-sighted and one-sided to qualify the tax shelter as a merely financial or economic issue. Improving the financial climate for filmmaking and increasing the production volume will, in the end, improve professional skills among filmmakers and consequently have a positive effect on the overall quality of the films. The tax shelter indirectly contributes to the skills and knowledge of audiovisual artists and technicians. The standards will rise for all audiovisual practices and the local sector will become more confident in its own capabilities: Flemish audiovisual arts and industry will develop a proper identity, in all areas of filmmaking, in spite of the limited local market prospects. And in the end, the Flemish arts and industry will start thinking internationally.

The third incentive has been the Flemish Audiovisual Fund. Throughout the five years of its existence, it has contributed greatly to the creation of a framework for the various audiovisual disciplines: fiction (including television), documentary, animation, experimental formats and media arts - and practices in Flanders. At the same time, the fund has made considerable and successful efforts for the international marketing and promotion of Flemish audiovisual creations and productions. Furthermore, the Fund launched various initiatives to promote new and young talent, including 'wildcards', a so-called 'film lab' for media artists, training and coaching, thus giving precious and fruitful impulses to filmmakers and artists in all areas of the audiovisual arts and industry.

Following various international developments in the audiovisual (and visual) arts and industry, and given the fact that the younger generation no longer grew up in a world in which cinema was the only available visibility platform for audiovisual creation and in which the classic formats were imposed as standards and exclusive frame of reference, a new generation of Flemish audiovisual artists and filmmakers has emerged. A generation that eagerly explores new working methods and forms of presentation and that develops its artistic talents and ambitions using new means of expression, instruments and strategies, away from old business models and established formats. The young filmmaker/artist has a wider perspective than his predecessors. For him, art and economy are no longer inseparable, and he no longer considers 'creation', 'production' and 'presentation' as a series of consecutive steps in an industrial process from maker to consumer. Instead, he is growing up in a world in which art is becoming an interactive process in which the old patterns are gradually becoming obsolete or less clearly defined.

In that context, the disappearance of the borderlines between the classic genres - fiction, documentary, animation - and formats - feature-length films, television film, short film - and the increasing cross-over within audiovisual practices itself (television, cinema, computer screen, live audiovisual arts) are indications that the audiovisual arts are 'breaking out of their disciplinary frame' moving into the worlds of visual and performing arts (theatre, dance and ballet, opera, performance), sound arts and music and even architecture and literature (visual poetry).

Evolutions and tendencies

During the past decade, a thorough and accelerating evolution has taken place in all areas of filmmaking and audiovisual arts in Flanders. This evolution, however, is not the result of a process of action and reaction, and even much less of any disregard for the history of film in Flanders. It is a process of gradual evolution, shifts, tendencies, with a young generation exploring frontiers, seeking to connect with artistic tendencies in and outside Europe, and leaving the limitations of the past for what they were. In that evolution, they can work in better conditions and are more efficiently supported by production conditions, government support, streams of information and exchange of expertise.

Fiction

A striking tendency among the present generation of Flemish filmmakers is their cautiousness when it comes to the classic Flemish literary heritage that was so often the source of inspiration during the 1960s en 1970s, the heydays of producer Jan Van Raemdonck and director Roland Verhavert's films based on famous Flemish novels. In contrast, the politically and socially committed cinema of the later 1970s found it more difficult to find audiences. Significantly, politically committed director Robbe De Hert's only box office success actually was an adaptation of a classic rural novel Whitey from Sichem (De Witte van Sichem by Ernest Claes). Today's filmmakers' and audiences' curiosity seems sooner aroused by recognizable contemporary issues. It is, of course, impossible to give an exhaustive survey of every film made during the past decade, or to discuss every Flemish filmmaker individually. The following survey only intends to indicate some tendencies and typicalities.

Following the international arthouse filmmaking trends, the complex narration has been introduced in Flemish cinema. Fien Troch's debut Someone Else's Happiness (2005) interweaves several plot lines around the story of a car overriding a child into a depiction of an existential void and profound loneliness. The inability to communicate is a recurrent theme among the younger Flemish filmmakers. Their cinema is existentially motivated rather than socially. Formally, they prefer visual composition to documentary-like registration, with a strong tendency towards aestheticism.

The story of Dorothée Van Den Berghe's debut feature, Girl (Meisje, 2002), takes place in a similarly stylized environment, be it in another manner, with three 'girls' from different generations struggling with existence. And Patrice Toye's second feature, Nowhere Man ((N)iemand), to be released in 2008, ten years after her successful debut Rosie (1998), tells the story of a man in search of identity and true love.

Rock musician Tom Barman's Any Way the Wind Blows (2003), on the other hand, is not an impressionist portrait, but a panoramic evocation of a generation and an era. All characters make an uprooted impression, blown back and forth by existence.

The talented Felix van Groeningen made his first film, Steve+Sky, in 2004 and came up to the expectations with With Friends like These (Dagen zonder lief), a film set in the provincial town of Sint-Niklaas. Van Groeningen creates a personal imagery. The action - or rather, the lack of action - takes place in the outskirts of the city. Van Groeningen shows us a naked city, as empty as the protagonists that hang about in the streets. His third film will be an adaptation of a popular novel (cf. supra) that explores the limits of life on the brink: Reetveerdegem, the village where a young man grows up to become a writer in spite of an appalling youth.

Youngsters wandering and searching aimlessly in a vacuum in the midst of a society of abundance are a favourite theme among the youngest generation of filmmakers. Last Summer (De laatste zomer) by Joost Wynant fits perfectly in this category. His first film depicts a striking flair for witty and accurate dialogue. His young protagonists do all they can to survive an unbearably light summer. Any kind of dope will do, fluid or in powder. For a brief moment, these offer relief, but shortly after the abyss will be all the deeper. The message is anything but heartening, but Wynant is talented enough as to convey it accurately and with a proper sense of atmosphere.

Koen Mortier is a different kind of stylist. Financing his low budget feature debut all by himself, Ex-Drummer is, to put in one word, 'punk': visually virtuoso, as regards content an interesting visual equivalent of 'Flemish Bukowski' Herman Brusselmans's universe. In this film, the writer's alter ego joins a bizarre fringe band as their drummer. In Flanders, the film met with mixed reactions, but at foreign festivals (Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Toronto, Karlovy Vary) it was a hit.

Much like Mortier, Dimitri Karakatsanis started his career on the international platform: Small Gods premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Small Gods is a road trip through a no man's land. The characters are all lonely and desolate souls, turned inwards to the extreme, damaged by life, in search of a catharsis.

Television maker and former film reviewer Nic Balthazar reconciles both worlds: his BenX did well both domestically and abroad. He pinched the audience award and the 'Prix des Amériques' in Montréal. Contrary to most Flemish first films, his tells a rather uplifting story: Ben is an autistic teenager who is bullied by his fellow pupils at school. The drama leads towards a nearly desperate climax, but then Ben will have his sweet revenge. The visual style of the film has been intriguingly interwoven with the computer games in which Ben feels at home. Balthazar, a generation older than most first time filmmakers, addresses a large audience.

The same applies to Geoffrey Enthoven, whose attention is focused on social issues: in Children of Love (Les enfants de l'amour), his outstanding documentary-like debut feature about the often complex and precarious situation in which children of divorced parents find themselves, and in The Only One (Vidange perdue), a film about the fate of a lonely ageing man. Enthoven is currently preparing two projects: Happy Together, about a family in financial trouble, and The Over the Hill Band, in which three elderly women try to revive the former band of their youth.

Miel Van Hoogenbemt's A Perfect Match (Man zkt vrouw) deals with similar themes. The main character is performed by Flanders' best known actor, Jan Decleir, who shows up in almost any prominent Flemish film of the past four decades and who has acquired some international renown. His palette ranges from rural dramas such as Mira and The Conscript (De loteling), children's films - Winky's Horse (Het paard van Sinterklaas) - to the dark thriller The Alzheimer Case. In A Perfect Match he is a retired headmaster who becomes infatuated with his young Rumanian housekeeper.

Filmmaker Lieven Debrauwer also envisages a larger audience. With Pauline & Paulette (awarded at the 2001 Cannes 'Quinzaine des Réalisateurs') and Sweet Jam (Confituur)(2004 Venice Days) he seeks to address an audience that is not satisfied with mere entertainment, but wants films to be accessible. His biotope (starting with his short film Leonie, which pinched the jury prize in Cannes 1996) is a world of nostalgia and melancholia, of people and things that pass. Debrauwer directs this world with the sensitivity of operetta that appeals to viewers home and abroad.

Films for youngsters and children are rare in Flanders. A Private View produced two films for teenagers: The Ball (De bal, 1999) and Science Fiction (2002), both by Dany Deprez. Cine 3 made four films based on books about young hero Blinker by Marc de Bel, all of which were as popular as Dirk Beliën's The Kriegel Sisters. A deserving effort was director Vincent Bal's debut film Man of Steel (Man van staal, 1999). His second, Minoes, based on a popular story by famous Dutch children's writer Annie M.G. Schmidt, was a hit. Well made, stylishly shot and directed, this entirely Dutch production is a major credit to the Flemish filmmaker.

Apart from the numerous talented and promising young directors, the 'older' generation continues to produce films: stylists such as Guido Henderickx (recently King of the World) (Koning van de wereld, 2006 - theatrical feature and TV-miniseries) and - the somewhat younger - Dominique Deruddere, maker of Everybody Famous (Iedereen beroemd) (nominated for the 2000 foreign language Oscar), who recently delivered a comedy (A Chicken is No Dog) and the German produced Blood Wedding both intended for a large audience. Marc Didden, who directed three films during the 1980s and 1990s has devoted himself to scriptwriting (King of the World). Frank Van Passel, maker of refreshing and charming Manneken Pis (1995) and stylish Villa des roses (2001) is now mainly active as a producer. One of his recent and deserving productions was actress-filmmaker Hilde van Mieghem's second film Love Belongs to Everyone (Dennis van Rita)(2006).

Moving back into a more distant past, we arrive at a generation that has left its mark on the history and character of Flemish filmmaking, but that has not made any film since 2002: writer-director-dramatist Hugo Claus (De Verlossing), nostalgic aestheticist Roland Verhavert, baroque Harry Kümel and rebel Robbe De Hert.

Diametrically opposed to the classics from the past, new and still somewhat indistinct tendencies become apparent. That tomorrow's landscape will look far less homogeneous that yesterday's is evident. We will, undoubtedly, witness the rise of less formal production methods and strategies. Theatre makers and companies, for instance, have recently experimented with fiction film, setting up film projects themselves. Given the fact that some natural ingredients for fiction are available on the stage - actors are often linked to companies by contract - it is only a small step from the stage to the screen.

An interesting example, for instance, was Needcompany's experiment with classic feature-length film format Goldfish Game (2002). Other companies, notably Victoria (Peter Monsaert, Voorlopig niks) and Nieuwpoorttheater (Jan Geers, Flatscreen) have made efforts towards audiovisual media. One of these efforts, Übung by actor Josse De Pauw, created an intriguing symbiosis of film and stage performance. Wayne Traub consistently tries to put together a body of work on the cutting edge between both media, leaning towards the stage in one, and towards the screen in the other. For philosopher-theatre maker Pieter De Buysser both media clearly have a brother-sister relationship. And from the world of contemporary dance - Wim Vandekeybus and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - film has become a creative component of their work.

It is justified to conclude this brief survey of Flemish fiction with the most remarkable recent film debut: Khadak (2006) by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. Both filmmakers have crossed the territory of ethnographically inspired documentary to arrive at classic fiction filmmaking. Khadak is set in Mongolia, where Brosens previously made the poetic documentary trilogy City of the Steppes (1993), State of Dogs (1998) and Poets of Mongolia (1999). With Khadak, soon to be followed by the new feature Fragments of Grace, the anthropologist's view has introduced a new genre in Flemish filmmaking. The exotic culture with its particular codes and meanings demands particular imagery and a new form of aesthetics. At the same time, the background of the story - the traditional Mongolian culture that is threatened by large-scale mining projects - provides a new kind of socially and politically committed cinema. From an international perspective, Khadak is, beyond doubt, the most impressive Flemish film of the decade. The film received the Luigi De Laurentiis Award in Venice (2006) and was shown at almost all important film festivals: Rotterdam, Toronto, Sundance, Mar del Plata, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Hong Kong ...).

Today, Brosens has been active as a documentary filmmaker for over 15 years. Yet, his previous films never received the same amount of exposure as this fiction debut. This only goes to show that fiction is still the major eye-catcher in the audiovisual arts and media. Compared to other genres and formats, fiction fairly easily finds its way to the customer. In that respect, the position of feature-length fiction is comparable to that of the novel in literature: even though there are hundreds of other literary practices, the novel is, for some reason, considered the most prestigious and most practiced format.

In Flanders, the Flemish Audiovisual Fund finances both feature-length fiction and creative documentary. Support is also given to animation, short film and experimental media. The main part of the budget, however, still goes to theatrical fiction. This hierarchy, that is currently losing importance, is also reflected in the exhibition and presentation landscape. The major (Ghent and Brussels), and the specialized festivals (world cinema in Bruges, Turnhout and Leuven) focus is still on theatrical fiction. There are, indeed, events focusing on documentary, short film and experimental media in Flanders, but these initiatives are more modest in size and prestige.

Documentary

Documentaries are mainly shown in the context of specialized initiatives, including the ambient project Zone, the Docville festival in Leuven and the Panorama of Belgian documentary in Brussels. In order to give documentary filmmaking a new boost, the Flemish Audiovisual Fund launched a similar Faits Divers campaign for documentaries in partnership with commercial broadcaster VTM. Documentaries are, indeed, mostly made for or visible on television, even if broadcasters reserve modest screening time and schedules for interesting documentaries. The available budgets have shrunk and become scarce. The format requirements and the screening schedules practiced by television makers obstruct creativity rather than stimulate it.

But as far as the documentary complies with the imposed formats, broadcasters do make room for them. An example is Manu Riche's contribution to the VRT-series High Trees (Hoge bomen), in which he makes highly personal portraits of a number of well-known personalities. For each portrait, Riche follows his 'subject' during an entire year. He painstakingly avoids doing interviews: what you see and hear should speak for itself. He developed this realistic, observing style of documentary filmmaking previously for the reputed French-Belgian documentary series Strip-Tease.

Several filmmakers sought to develop their own particular place in the documentary landscape: Frank Theys, for instance, gives his documentary a grandiose, cinematographic flair in Technocalyps: he gives his visual imagination free rein in his evocation of a number of technological developments - biogenetics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology... - that may soon challenge man's supremacy.

From Theys's 'transhumanism' to Didier Volckaert and An Van. Dienderen's visual antropology is a light year long journey. In Dog of Flanders (2007) they set off in search of the roots of a lachrymose tale of a Flemish dog that is adored by all Japanese. In Tu ne verras pas Verapaz (2002) they examine the equally bizarre story of Belgian immigrants and how they arrived in Guatemala in the 19th century. The filmmakers appear on the screen themselves along with their subjects: their documentary is the result of an interaction between the maker and his subject.

Jan Vromman finds his inspiration closer to home, e.g. in a documentary about the then 82 year-old singer La Esterella, a Flemish diva of international stature who made her comeback in 1982, and in a monumental three-part documentary about the end of the Boel shipyards in Temse. In As Long as Ship Builders Are Singing (1999) Vromman reconstructs the history of the wharf, ending in a personal note of revolt.

In 2004 the much younger Fabio Wuytack attracted attention with his poetic and inventive student film Made in Italy, about an old Lumière film that leads the filmmaker to the marble quarries of Carrara in Italy and confronts him, in a playful manner, with his Italian roots.

Even though documentary is a relatively 'invisible' genre in most countries' traditional visibility platforms (cinema, television, festivals) - and very much so in Flanders - it is undeniably gaining ground on new platforms, such as the Internet and in informal circuits that are not under economic pressure.

Short film

Much the same can be said about the short film. The short film genre is a fully fledged artistic medium in which Flemish filmmakers have a strong international track record. One of the most spectacular recent examples is Tanghi Argentini by Guido Thys. His story of the philanthropic office clerk who wants to do good for his colleagues, pinched no less than 29 prizes and a nomination for the Academy Awards. In daily audiovisual practice, however, short film is usually the trailblazer towards the 'real thing': feature film making. That explains why Flemish cinema has hardly any reputed short film maker - except in animation, where filmmakers hardly get any chances to step over to feature-length animation. Most younger Flemish filmmakers took their first steps in the trade with short films; Dominique Deruddere's very first effort was a short film that he would later elaborate into Crazy Love. The same applies to recent Joos Wynants' Last Summer.

The range of genres in short film is enormous, from the endless supply of short films on YouTube to the reflective and contemplative work by filmmaker-visual artist Nicolas Provost. Plot Point (2007) is a 15-minute long hidden-camera registration of passers-by near Times Square New York. With his films, among which Papillon d'amour (2003) and Exoticore (2004), and recently Gravity and Suspension, Provost is a frequent guest at festivals like Rotterdam and Sundance. And yet, even Provost has started working on a feature-length film.

Much like anywhere else, it is the exceptions that confirm the rule: Alex Stockman began his filmmaking career with a short film, then went on to make a feature - the existentialist drama I Know I'll See Your Face Again (Verboden te zuchten) (2001), and went to back to short film making with Eva Stays in the Cupboard of the Full Moon (Eva reste au placard les nuits de pleine lune)(2006). The same happened to Dorothée Van Den Berghe: after Girl (awarded at Locarno) she made two short films: Kroeskop (2006) and Zoë (2007).

Short film is the focus of attention in a modest network of festivals and events: the International Short Film Festival Leuven, Het grote Ongeduld in Brussels (for students' films) and Courtisane (also for video and new media) in Ghent. The major festivals, however, make room for short films too, but still, filmmakers who would like to make a career with short films have little prospects in Flanders. It is arguable, then, that even the most talented short film makers, such as Bavo Defurne, Pieter Van Hees and Erik Lamens are making the transition towards feature-length film.

Animation

Flemish animation is historically a short film practice. Flanders' most famous animation filmmaker, Raoul Servais' body of work consists entirely of short films - all but Taxandria - with which he compiled an impressive record of international prizes and awards. A similar level of international acclaim was conferred upon film school student Jonas Geirnaert for his laconic/taciturn and inventive graduation film Flatlife, a minimalist work with maximal effect about the inhabitants of a flat, which won him a jury prize in Cannes in 2004.

Feature-length animation films are exceptional in Flanders. Projects such as Ben Stassen's 3D animation Fly Me to the Moon, about three flies that make a ride to the moon aboard Apollo 11, are rare. Still, various Flemish animation companies are involved in interesting international projects, such as The Triplets of Belleville (Les triplettes de Belleville) by Sylvain Chomet and Brendan and the Secret of Kells by Tom Moore Vivi film), Jester Till by Eberhard Junkersdorff and Snow White : the Sequel by Picha (De familie Jansen), The Little Ice Bear by Thilo Rothkirch and Flemish Piet de Rycker.

In spite of its small scale, Flemish animation offers a broad variety of styles and genres. There is the mini-series Kika and Bob by Vincent Bal and Colette Bothof on the one hand, and a series of 15 short animation films inspired by poems by Flemish poets under the name of Dichtvorm, produced by Geert Van Goethem's S(ight).O(f an).I(gnored).L(andscape). And last but not least, there is Administrators, a kafkaesque indictment against the absurd bureaucracy with which the maker himself, animator Roman Klochkov, was confronted as a sans papier in Flanders.

Animation film is the focus of the Brussels festival of animation film Anima. Like most thematic festivals, Anima is more than just a showcase of animation films. Anima also releases DVDs, distributes, organizes film education, and acts as a meeting place for professionals. Anima has become a real centre of expertise when it comes to animation.

Audiovisual experiment and media arts

What is categorised in Flanders as 'experimental media' is, in fact, a mosaic of styles, languages and emotions, all of which are characterized by a common desire to move away from Hollywood cinema and the dominant television formats. These makers try to develop their own formats and idiom, rather than browsing through traditions and conventions.

Some makers explicitly counter the mechanisms of mainstream media. In his visual essays, such as a.m./p.m. (2004) and Futur Antérieur (2007), Herman Asselberghs propagates a cinema that is associative and suggestive. The relations between image and sound, light and dark, presence and absence are deliberately distorted to generate new insight in the meaning of images. A similar philosophical reflection also characterizes the work of Stefaan Decostere, who made various documentaries during his time at the Flemish public broadcaster (VRT). His imagery does not merely illustrate the subject, but comments on it. In his Travelogue series (1990-1994) he investigates how the world is (re)presented as fiction, while at the same time detecting the parallels between tourism and television. In other works, Decostere looked for ways to increase the spectator's involvement via installations and online platforms. He is currently working on WARUM 2.0, an ambitious and multi-layered installation that is actually an 'update' of his documentary Warum wir Männer die Technik so Lieben (1985), reflecting on how technological media (re)organize and filter reality.

Other filmmakers use their work to analyze contemporary mass media and the way media determine how we view ourselves and the world. Johan Grimonprez' highly acclaimed video Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) investigates how the spectacle replaces the critical distance, how images replace reality and rewrite history. This decay of the distinction between reality and fiction, between 'fake' and 'real' is also the main theme of Looking for Alfred (2005 - 2006), part of a work-in-progress that is conceived as a tribute to Hitchcock on the one hand, and as an exploration of a culture of imitation on the other. No wonder then, that more and more film and video makers who grew up with the continuous presence of images, no longer refer to reality in their work, but to representations of reality on television and in cinema. In his videos Papillon d'amour or Plot Point, Nicolas Provost juggles with cinematographic codes and narrative clichés.

Some artists smuggle cinema into the world of the visual arts. Manon de Boer uses film, video and audio for intimate portraits of people, as in Robert, June 1996; Laurien, March 1996; Laurien, September 2001 and the recent Presto, Perfect Sound (2006). She explores the filmed face in search of tensions beneath the surface and thus tries to reveal the relations between real life time and recorded time, between time and duration. The experience of time is also a central theme in the installations by David Claerbout, who scans the borders between static and moving image. In Ruurlo, Borculoscheweg, 1910 (1997) or Shadow Piece (2005) photographs are brought to life by subtly introducing movement. The other way round, Long Goodbye (2007) records a gesture in one single slow motion shot, making the passing of time and the changing light visible and palpable. Hans Op de Beeck creates both tragicomic portraits (The Building (2007)) and 'unheimliche' landscapes (All Together Now... (2005)), each of which imagine a (spiritual/mental) being under way, an in-between, the chaos of the undefined.

The visual arts increasingly offer refuge to audiovisual artists who explore these interspaces in documentary, cinema, television, media art and visual art. Especially documentary filmmakers who look at the world from a self-reflexive perspective, find a place in museums and at biennales. One of the possible forms to explore the relation and transitions between an objective report and a subjective story is the video letter. Eric Pauwels applies this strategy in Lettre à Jean Rouch (1992) and Lettre d'un cinéaste à sa fille (1998), much like Els Opsomer in her imovie series (2003 - 2006). In her videos and installations, such as Les mouchoirs de Kabila (2005) and Power Cut (2007) Sarah Vanagt shows how children in the tumultuous border zone between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo create their own universe, in which the borders between reality and imagination, life and death, order and chaos, seem to fade. In The Intruder (2005) and Screen (De vennoten) (2006) Vincent Meessen investigates how reality is constructed artificially.

The first wave of video artists in Flanders in the 1980s had connections with a young generation of choreographers, theatre makers and musicians who were changing the Flemish artistic landscape. The roles are now reversed: moving image has not only become indispensable in museums and galleries, but on theatre stages as well. That is why and how audiovisual artists such as David Claerbout, Kurt d'Haeseleer and Peter Missotten made video backgrounds for opera productions of the Royal Monnaie Theatre, and why D'Haeseleer and Missotten, both members of 'De Filmfabriek', worked together with Toneelhuis, or why choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Rosas) and Wim Vandekeybus (Ultima Vez) do not consider video merely as a recording device, but as an essential part of their creative process. One of the key figures in the transit zone between dance, music and moving image is Walter Verdin. In the 1980s and 1990s, he received international acclaim for a series of videographic 'translations' of choreographies of Vandekeybus (Roseland, 1991), De Keersmaeker (Ottone, Ottone, 1991) and Steve Paxton (Goldberg Variations, 1992). By means of the analogue editing techniques of the time, he constructed complex and visual compositions full of emotion. The narrative lines were not only prompted by the dance movement, but also by the visual logic of electronic imagery. The power of his work, which he prefers to characterize as 'visual music', derives from the fact that he treats visual structures much the same way as musical structures: as a mathematical division of time. That concern is also at the core of his most recent project, Title Safe (2002 - 2006), for which he asked a number of filmmakers to make a video on the basis of one single soundtrack, with a constant rhythm of 125 BPM. The result is something like a taxonomy of rhythmic images.

In the wake of Verdin young video artists explore the relationship between image and sound, as they constantly move closer to each other in the digital age. It is a generation that grew up with rapidly changing audiovisual forms and technology: changing rhythms in editing, the transition of film to video and then to data, the aesthetic exchanges between cinema and television, the visual and aural polyphony of the MTV-culture. This becomes apparent in the programme of festivals of audiovisual performance, such as Cimatics, and in the work of various Flemish artists such as Kurt d'Haeseleer. He makes installations and videos like S*ckmyp (2004) or Fossilization (2005): autonomous audiovisual universes of tactile sounds and pointillist images. Anouk De Clercq's compositions are more like sensory, inner landscapes that belong to the realm of fantasy. Videos like Portal (2002), Building (2003) and Kernwasser Wunderland (2004) are images of mental spaces, put up with bleak colour tones, geographic shapes, unfathomable horizons and whispering sounds. The mainly minimalist, electronic soundtracks are no mere illustrations: it feels as if image and sound both originate from the same desolate void.

Other artists explore new media to expand the possibilities of cinematography. Computer games are often mentioned as models, because they have quickly become one of the dominant audiovisual forms in our cultural experience. Just as cinema was mainly seen as a direct descendent of photography and theatre - films were originally called 'photoplays' - games can be considered as one of the possible transitions of cinema. You might say that when film organizes time, games organize space. In that respect games are capable of breaking through some of the limitations of cinema: the linear spatial perspective, the 180° line of traditional editing and the spatial context of the 'screen', to name but a few. That potential is explored by the Workspace Unlimited collective, who create virtual environments on the basis of advanced 3D game technology, and connect them in a network where visitors can meet each other, crossing the borders between reality and virtuality or simulation and representation. Tale of Tales explores the possibilities of game culture as a medium for personal expression. The Endless Forest and the recent 144 are poetic fairytale-like worlds where elegance and wonder operate as an antidote against the all-consuming desire/urge for simulation and cynicism of the traditional game models.

(Editors: Walter Provo and Dirk De Wit)

 

Debuysere, S., Martens, E., ARTS FLANDERS 08 AUDIOVISUAL ARTS, Brussels, Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth, Sport and Media in collaboration with BAM, 2008.