Agenda

In addition to highlighting retrospectives and festivals, Sabzian selects and contextualises three to four films or events in Belgium and its surroundings every week.En plus de mettre en lumière des rétrospectives et des festivals, Sabzian sélectionne et contextualise chaque semaine trois à quatre films ou événements en Belgique et dans les environs.Naast het belichten van retrospectieven en festivals, selecteert en contextualiseert Sabzian elke week drie tot vier films of evenementen in België en omstreken.

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This Week’s Agenda

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Bram Van Beek

On Monday, Cinematek screens The Long Farewell (1971) by Ukrainian filmmaker Kira Muratova. Evgenia, a single mother, has trouble with her adolescent son. When he announces that he wants to live with his father, her fears and insecurities take over. Muratova’s main instrument in dissecting Evgenia’s growing despair is editing, over narration. Repetition and fast cuts create a hurried, restless rhythm that captures the protagonist’s state of mind as she’s forced to re-evaluate her identity as a mother. Muratova describes her own working method as follows: “Hidden in the footage, there is one method of editing, one optimal use of all possibilities.” Although the film is not anti-Soviet content wise, its release in 1971 was blocked by Moscow. Muratova’s radical style made the film suspect. Only in 1987 would the film finally be seen on the screen.

One year earlier, Barbara Loden’s film Wanda (1970) also put the wanderings of a woman at the center of its narrative. No rapid editing here, but a series of extended long takes that capture the passivity of the main character, an alcoholic from Pennsylvania who abandons her husband and children, and meets a stranger along the way with whom she begins robbing banks. Combining influences from Neorealism and Godard’s approach to cinéma vérité, Loden’s film, which is screened on Saturday at De Cinema, can be seen as a commentary on New Hollywood, particularly the romanticized image of a gangster couple in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

Blue Velvet (1986), David Lynch’s classic commentary on the dark underbelly of small-town America, is a film that needs multiple viewings, and Cinematek offers the possibility to rewatch it on the big screen. Crammed with references to the history of cinema, from the Lumières to Buñuel and Hitchcock, Lynch walks a fine line between what Frederic Jameson would call postmodern nostalgia, and a critical deconstruction of the hypocrisy of white-picket-fence America.
 

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