Sabzian is an international film magazine, hailing from Belgium.Sabzian est une revue de cinéma internationale, originaire de Belgique.Sabzian is een internationaal filmtijdschrift, afkomstig uit België.
Sabzian is a free online magazine that relies on the work of a group of dedicated volunteers.We could use your support. Please consider a donation!Sabzian est un magazine en ligne gratuit qui dépend du travail d’un groupe de bénévoles dévoués. Votre soutien nous aide beaucoup. Pensez à faire un don !Sabzian is een gratis online magazine dat afhankelijk is van het werk van een groep toegewijde vrijwilligers.We kunnen uw steun goed gebruiken. Overweeg een donatie!
Perhaps this is the function that computer animation can best assume from film: the creation of a totally administered world, a complete faith in the image. Whatever CGI might lose in its production of likeness and in the spectator’s knowledge of how this image is produced, it gains in this enhanced relation to control. No more rustling of the wind in the trees but merely a simulated wind, what Farocki calls a “new constructivism.”
For the past fifty years, John Smith has been making himself at home in the ambiguous realm of image and language. He worked within and parallel to the London Film-makers’ Co-op in his early years, adding to the collective’s structural approach to cinema an equal concern with the construction of narrativity. In all seriousness, he creates a game in every film, deconstructing the givens of words, sound and images, remaking them with humour, even when laughter seems inappropriate. Sabzian spoke to Smith during Courtisane Festival 2026.
70 years ago, in 1956, Lionel Rogosin made On the Bowery, a landmark of American cinema and a key work in the revival of American independent filmmaking. The texts gathered here return to this formative period in Rogosin’s career: to his influences, his encounters on the Bowery, his collaborators and his search for a cinematic language. The collection coincides with the retrospective of Rogosin’s films at CINEMATEK, presented in collaboration with Sabzian.
Wil je je graag ontwikkelen als kunst- en filmcriticus en heb je een uitgesproken interesse in bewegend beeld? Dan is de workshop die cultuurtijdschrift rekto:verso en filmtijdschrift Sabzian eind oktober organiseren tijdens en over Contour Biënnale in Mechelen iets voor jou! Stel je kandidaat tegen 4 oktober.
Ik heb nooit beslist om documentarist te worden, om me voorgoed binnen een bepaald kader te installeren. Ik heb overigens een hekel aan dat woord: documentarist. Het draagt bij aan de afgrenzing van een genre dat voortdurend is geëvolueerd en waarvan iedereen weet hoe poreus het is, hoe variabel de contouren, welke bijna-bloedband het onderhoudt met het genre dat er altijd tegenover wordt geplaatst: fictie. Beelden zijn immers minder getrouw aan de “werkelijkheid” dan aan de intenties van wie ze produceert.
Antes, as imagens estavam no mundo. Hoje, é o mundo que se banha em um oceano de imagens. Nosso mundo real, material e único; tecido e transbordado por imagens reais, imateriais, numeradas (constituídas de números), inumeráveis. Para observar o cinema contemporâneo é preciso inscrevê-lo no contexto desse exponencial aumento quantitativo e qualitativo da potência das imagens, interrogar o papel que ela desempenhou e continua a desempenhar.
Tenho uma boa notícia para todos: o cinema está em crise. O que, de certa forma, não é novidade, pois tem estado continuamente em crise ao longo da sua existência.
Anne-Marie Miéville has always been notoriously shy about the specific character of her collaboration with Godard. In her later work, the films between Le Livre de Marie (1984) and Après la reconciliation (2000), we recognise elements that look (and sound) familiar from Godard’s work (the typography of the opening credits, the sounds, the abruptness of acoustic editing, for example), but they are entirely transformed. During the Sonimage years, Papa comme maman provides a unique insight into Miéville’s style since it is the only work she directed outside of the AMM/JLG framework.
She could collect rocks and lace. She could be a harpist or a horsewoman. Lots of elegance, of calm blonde hair. Her first feature film, Mon cher sujet, is a film that talks of women without preciousness or complacency, a musical and essential film. Anne-Marie Miéville often answers questions with a hermetic gracious smile, as if everything we need to know about her is in her film. She’s right, of course. Miéville: “I also have a daughter. In the film, you can see her sing a song she has written; she’s twenty-four. And some months ago, when the film was already finished, my daughter in her turn had a little girl... I start from the principle that we need to talk about what we know.”
Wie steun ontvangt, stelt zich zelden vragen bij wat er zich in zo’n commissie afspeelt. Wie geen steun krijgt, leest de feedback aandachtig, maar blijft vaak met het gevoel zitten dat het dossier niet goed begrepen werd. Commissiewerk verschijnt dan als een black box: je stopt er iets in en er komt een beslissing uit, zonder dat helemaal helder is hoe die precies tot stand kwam.
A boy of about twelve years old on a bicycle. He rides as fast as he can. In sheer desperation, he has just violently robbed two people. The whole world is on his heels and is about to catch up with him, no matter how fast he rides. But the camera continues to follow him effortlessly in one smooth movement. It seems to make no particular effort to keep up with this boy on the run, and the boy, for his part, makes no attempt to escape the frame. For the full duration of this uninterrupted shot, lasting almost a minute and a half, boy and camera, body and image, are attuned to one another.
Recently Belgian streaming platform and distributor Avila presented a new collection dedicated to one of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive voices: South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo.
From 20 to 27 September, the second edition of Estranhos Encontros: São Paulo International Film Festival presents, for the first time in Brazil and Latin America, a retrospective devoted to Dutch filmmaker Frans van de Staak (1943–2001).
From September 15 to October 15, L’Alliance New York presents Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned, a film series programmed by Michael Witt and previously presented at the ICA in London, exploring the unrealized projects and ideas that shaped Godard’s cinema.
We start the week with the opening night of a special carte blanche series at CINEMATEK on Tuesday. The evening pays tribute to the enduring relationship between American film historians Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell and the Royal Belgian Film Archive, whose library will now bear their names. Thompson has selected Germinal (Albert Capellani, 1913), a landmark of early cinema and arguably Capellani’s masterpiece. Once largely forgotten, the director was rediscovered through retrospectives at Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2010 and 2011. With its striking realism, restrained performances and remarkably sustained long takes, Germinal stands among the great films of 1913. The screening will be preceded by an introduction in English by Kristin Thompson and accompanied by piano.
Meanwhile in Ghent this Tuesday, Film-Plateau opens its semester at KASKcinema with the series Sport and Stamina: a vibrant programme of short films exploring sport, competition and the human body in motion. The programme features Combat de boxe (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1927), Taris, roi de l’eau (Jean Vigo, 1931), Soigne ton gauche (René Clément, 1936), The Water Nymph (Mack Sennett, 1912), Het Kampioenschap van Vlaanderen te Koolskamp (Clemens De Landtsheer, 1932), Dood van een Sandwichman (Robbe De Hert, 1971), and three sports-science research films from the 1970s. Live music will be performed by KASK & Conservatorium students Noah Jordens (piano), Toon Putteman (drums) and Werend Van Den Bossche (saxophone), with a short introduction by Daniel Biltereyst, Gertjan Willems and Steven Jacobs.
As part of De Cinema’s programme Back 2 School, Frederick Wiseman’s rarely screened Deaf (1986) takes us into The School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute, one of the most renowned institutions of its kind in the United States. Wiseman filmed the school in 1984, observing its educational philosophy of “total communication,” which combines sign language, speech, lip-reading, hearing aids and writing. As in much of his work, he patiently follows exchanges between pupils and teachers, allowing the complexities of communication to emerge through long, closely observed scenes.
