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!
People Passing Through Me in an Endless Procession
28.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF
7 texts, 4 film pages, 1 event, 1 news item,
NL FR EN
An artist and engraver, Frans van de Staak (1943–2001) first encountered the power of cinema in a sequence from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert. He went on to enrol in film school and founded CINEECRI, a journal he distributed himself. Using grant money earned through graphic design, he made a series of short films in the 1970s that laid the groundwork for his cinema: early attempts to transpose texts by writers such as Korneliszoon Poot and Spinoza to the screen. Rather than striving for faithful reproduction, he filmed amateur actors in their effort to give voice to the text, judging takes more by ear than by eye.
07.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF
9 texts, 21 film pages, 1 event, 2 news items,
NL FR EN
The year 2025 marked the mournful fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini. After his death, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a passionate plea for him, warning against the posthumous moralisation and simplification of his oeuvre, which he considered a threat to the radical complexity of his work and his person. “Do not pass judgement on Pasolini,” he wrote, “do not render harmless what was never meant to be harmless.” This collection of texts follows Sabzian’s recent publication WHO IS ME, a Dutch translation of Pasolini’s posthumous autobiographical text Poeta delle ceneri [Poet of the Ashes]. In that text, Pasolini writes: “No artist in any country is ever free. An artist is a living objection.” In that spirit, this collection gathers several texts on Sabzian dedicated to Pasolini’s films, his writings and his lasting legacy.
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This Week’s Agenda
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Joseph Losey’s The Servant is an indictment of the English class system. Losey, who was blacklisted by Hollywood for his communist sympathies, explores the reversal of power in the relationship between a butler and his wealthy employer. Through manipulation and deceit, the butler gradually gains control over his employer, who eventually becomes a prisoner in his own house. The theme of class struggle is reflected in a mise-en-scène that spatially opposes high and low spaces, with the staircase symbolically connecting the two.
A classic of neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Sciuscià looks at post-war Italian society through the eyes of Pasquale and Guiseppe, two young shoeshine boys whose friendship and childhood innocence are put to the test as their environment pushes them into criminality. The first film to win an Oscar for best foreign language film, Sciuscià was praised for its truthful depiction of everyday life. Orson Welles is often quoted saying that, as he watched the film, “the camera disappeared, the screen disappeared; it was just life . . .”
Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution is Godard’s critique of a technocratic world where technology represses individual expression. Somewhere in the future, secret agent Lemmy Caution is sent to the totalitarian city of Alphaville ruled by ALPHA 60, a supercomputer imposing its algorithmic logic and forbidding all forms of emotion, love and art. Combining elements from film noir, German expressionism and cinema vérité, Godard’s juxtaposition of genres and styles creates a dystopian image of a world where “weird has become normal”. In a time when algorithms are increasingly turning us into “slaves of probability”, as Lemmy Caution puts it, Alphaville reminds us of the importance of unpredictability.
Belgian Premieres and Festivals
Each month, Sabzian lists upcoming Belgian premieres, releases and festivals.
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