Van 9 juni tot en met 31 augustus wijdt CINEMATEK een tentoonstelling aan Fernand Schirren, de hoofdpianist die stille films begeleidde vanaf de oprichting van het Filmmuseum in 1962 tot 1982. In 1982 hielp Schirren mee aan het samenstellen van een vaste ploeg pianisten die de dagelijkse projecties in CINEMATEK zouden begeleiden, waaronder Jean-Luc Plouvier. Plouvier: “Zonder voorbereiding improviseren op stille films is een bijzondere discipline, sterk te onderscheiden van het schrijven van filmmuziek. De pianist staat niet aan de kant van de regisseur en de monteur, die voorbereid zijn en hun werk meestal verbergen.”

I think of myself as someone who has an instinctual understanding of what it is to be a minority person. That is someone whose existence is highly marginal in the society and understands it in the gut but will not be dominated by it. Therefore, I refuse all of those labels, such as Black Woman Filmmaker, because I believe in my work as something that can be looked at without labels.

In order to get at how I think about making a movie at a low budget, I have to be able to give you the theory, the narrative theory, that supports my reasons for making movies. If any of you have seen my work, you know I’m only interested in telling stories, and most of those stories are fairly contemporary. And to some degree they are ahistorical, meaning, though I think that is going to change, that the focus of the work is entirely narrative in orientation.

Het nieuws passeerde bijna geruisloos: eind februari vroeg Filmmagie het faillissement aan, het oudste filmtijdschrift van het land legde finaal de boeken neer. (...) Drie weken geleden lanceerde het VAF een oproep voor projectsubsidies van 65 000 euro voor een opvolger van Filmmagie. Het tijdschrift moet focussen “op onafhankelijke filmkritiek met oog voor enerzijds kwaliteitsfilms met een culturele en maatschappelijke betekenis en anderzijds voor de ontwikkeling van filmcultuur in Vlaanderen en daarbuiten”. Daarbij moeten “achtergrond, kritiek en verdieping hand in hand gaan”. 

“The International Women’s Year provided me with the opportunity to make it [Fatma 75]. I figured that, for the first Tunisian film entirely devoted to this subject, I must not resort to fiction but make an analytical work. Through this film, I set about demystifying what is called ‘the miracle of Tunisian women’s emancipation’.”

Fatma 75’s approach is quite original. The film is based on essays and histories written on the Tunisian feminist movement, using fiction to make its message accessible to the general public. Selma baccar: “As for my experience as a woman director, I think it was very important for me. My relationship with the crew and the actors was excellent. The shooting of Fatma 75 was “all roses”. On the other hand, in order to obtain the necessary funding for the production of the film, I felt a great mistrust from some of the people in charge, although I had a special card up my sleeve: a film about women made by a woman. But the problem of film production in Tunisia is the same for men and women: it’s negative for both of them.”

“It’s much more enjoyable to watch theatre than to make theatre, and it is much more enjoyable to make films than to watch a film, because film is a much more evolved medium when it comes to the material you are interpreting. Imagine to simply steal someone’s face, their appearance, capturing it at the angle you’re most attracted to, where it moves you, and to try to piece together all that you’ve stolen afterwards during the editing; that you can then fabricate something very moving.”

It is an intriguing film because of its original position in the field of Flemish film production. This is not some attempt at a standard technical finish that’s devoid of aesthetic politics. It is a clearly defined boundary, an emphatic style within which the entire film must develop. This is an unusual (almost suicidal) road for a young (Flemish) filmmaker. His colleagues are out to make attractive films that people will consider solid and professionally made. Films that are able to attract official subsidies, but only lead the public to believe that “we” might one day be able to make one too. 

“It’s a sort of acrobatic distance, here in Hedda Gabler, that makes you hold your breath in suspense (the acting is wonderful!) until it should be released by laughter. There’s a spluttering retelling of a wildly unlikely story, a kooky imitation of melodramatic conflicts, a travesty of critical unriddling, offering this extremely slow, calm countercurrent full of rapids and waterfalls.”