L'Ecole des Pickpockets
Sven Augustijnen
2000
video | 00:48:00 | col. | sound
orig. version: French | avail. languages: English

Charles Dickens framed petty theft (most famously in his novel Oliver Twist') as a gesture of civil disobedience in a society that did little to care for the poor, yet today the slight handed art of the pickpocket is more often than not reduced to a side show element in the dizzy and contagious acts of prime time TV magicians. However, in Brussels, like most major cities, pickpocketing is a day-to-day reality.
Shot in a single working day, this film observes two master pickpockets initiating a fresh faced young apprentice into the secret art of invisible theft. The film is shot in an underground room, a hidden place where you witness what the Surrealists termed the 'beauty of the perfect crime' unfold before you.
Whilst the viewer may admire the skill of these thieves and are seduced by their charisma, the actuality of the crime imparts a feeling of uneasiness. Akin to the members of the public who are invited to the training session to 'play' the role of the victim, the viewers of the film are placed in a position of contradiction, between fascination and repulsion.
For the voyeur of this staged ritual, everything seems to be smoothly choreographed whereas, in reality, the act is seditious and opportunistic. Following the movements of the protagonists closely with his camera, the artist, with unobtrusive editing, reflects on the banality and artificiality of this lesson in what one of the thieves' terms "the work of an artist".
A video between fiction and reality.