Frans van de Staak is a much-admired Dutch filmmaker, praised by Johan van der Keuken as, in his strongest moments, “the filmmaker that approaches the essence of filmmaking the closest.” Nevertheless, his films are hard to find, let alone to experience in a cinema. This week, you’re given the exceptional opportunity to watch his film Windschaduw (1986) on 16 millimetre at Art Cinema OFF off.
Another rare opportunity presents itself at BUDA, Kortrijk, where you can enjoy Flowers of Shanghai (1998) by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, an adaptation of the novel The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (1892) by Han Bangqing, set in one of the most elegant brothels of Shanghai. Hsiao-Hsien said: “all that we want to do is capture that atmosphere and re-create it in a way that represents our imagination of Flowers of Shanghai, as well as all those other early vernacular novels we are familiar with.”
Patrick Leboutte is a film critic, teacher, but also a cyclophile. “Cinematography and the first cycle races are exactly contemporary: new means of transport. This is not a coincidence; these two arts being governed by the same Joule's law: every body in work generates energy and this in return makes the machine turn. This is the principle of cycling; this is also that of cinema. In both cases, it is a question of putting life into the mechanical.”
Leboutte will present a lecture on cycling and cinema, preceded by a ‘Tatiesque prologue’. Afterwards, he will introduce the cycling film Parpaillon (1993) by Luc Moullet: “If his film presents all the appearances of a true-false documentary, its burlesque approach to moving bodies clearly places it on the side of Jacques Tati, of whom I always thought he was the sole heir.”
