“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.”

All this to explain why I have compulsively found myself making films that are so much more difficult to make than those of my male colleagues.

Woman, Arab and... filmmaker. A viable situation? If so, some questions: Is there even one Arab filmmaker who has provoked an explosion of scorn for asserting in front of Marxist militants – don’t laugh – his desire to become a filmmaker? Is there even one Arab filmmaker who was forced to hide from his family that he wanted to make films? Is there even one Arab filmmaker who was called mad by X number of producers for having dared to propose to go and film a guerrilla war? Is there even one Arab filmmaker who has been told from the cradle that he fundamentally wasn’t a “creative” being? To inspire the works of others, fair enough! To write novels dealing with “feminine” subjects is allowed, but barely so (and reluctantly, by the way). But to take the camera in order to talk about human dignity (especially when insisting on women’s liberation), about national dignity? Oh, no, lady! That’s men’s business.

Een jaar later, toen de Duitsers de oorlog hadden verloren en de concentratiekampen waren bevrijd, fotografeerden en filmden de geallieerden de complexen, de overlevenden en de sporen die wezen op miljoenen vermoorde mensen. Vooral de beelden van stapels schoenen, brillen en kunstgebitten en de bergen afgeschoren haar maakten een diepe indruk. Misschien moeten er eerst beelden zijn vooraleer iets wat nauwelijks voorstelbaar is indruk maakt, fotografische beelden, afdrukken van de werkelijkheid op afstand.

“De mijnwerkers komen uit de mijnschacht tevoorschijn. Ze gaan de straat op, hun gezichten zwart, leerkartonnen helmen op hun hoofd, brandende lampen in hun handen, in dichte rijen die de hele breedte van de straat innemen. Ze naderen met rasse schreden, neuriën een zacht en krachtig gefluisterd lied, voorafgegaan door een zwarte stofwolk.”

“Each time I made a film, it was in a given political period; each time I had a political objective, my films couldn’t just be without orientation. That’s not sentimentality. Through a form of sensibility, a political problem emerges. The destruction of Beirut, the children fighting, it means something. I figured this way of showing things could touch people and have a real political impact. People are fed up with the talking. On television, for example, one day they show a representative of the left, the next a representative of the right. Every day, they agree with someone else, and they end up forgetting who’s right or wrong!”

“They no longer allowed us to express ourselves. There was no freedom anymore. At the time, I didn’t fully understand that I was scaring them because I didn’t realize the impact of my work. With my documentaries and my different way of looking at things, I managed to reach European and American television channels. They were afraid my images would shake the public opinion and dismantle their propaganda.”

“This documentary phase wasn’t only linked to my personal history; it was determined by my country’s political situation and Lebanon’s cinema history. My trajectory is a bit like that of other Lebanese filmmakers. If I decided to move to fiction it’s because, after speaking in a “militant” manner, I now want the image to speak as much as possible.”

Can it be simply by chance that most films created by women give as much importance to sound, to music, to the timbre of voices recorded or captured unawares, as they do to the image itself? It is as though the screen had to be approached cautiously and be peopled, if need be, with images seen through a look, even a short-sighted, hazy look, but borne on a full, commanding voice, hard as stone but fragile and rich as the human heart.

Assia Djebar’s treatment for La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli [The Zerda or the Songs of Oblivion] (1978-1982): “Without any comment, however, shortly before and during the credits, three known paintings by Delacroix unfold in long shots and in slow pan shots that focus on details of characters, horses or costume elements, each of the paintings linked to an atmosphere of music and fantasia from the pre-colonial Maghreb.”

“[Fertile Memory] is the result of several years of work. I made several reports in the occupied territories, but I also have to say that the film was beyond me. The Palestinian question is basically an issue of oppression: an oppression that dominates the world. I said to myself that I would be able to give the Palestinian question a new dimension by talking about the most oppressed. I thought that women would help bring out all the contradictions.”

“There’s something crazy about editing. The little I learned about film technique and the manipulation of forms comes from editing really. Because I had to edit everything myself; I couldn’t afford an editor – and I didn’t want one anyway. I was too – what word do they use nowadays? – “invested”. Funny word.”

With nimble-fingered virtuosity, he operated an array of objects arranged around his piano: fake pistols for crime-of-passion gunshots, castanets to imitate the sound of horses’ hooves, grains of lead sliding over a canvas for the sound of waves, buckets of water and sponges for the sound of raindrops. From high up in my little room across the street, I could hear the sounds of the piano, which allowed me to understand what kind of film it was: a farce, a bourgeois drama, a romantic comedy, or even a violent storm at sea or bolting horses at a gallop.

Herman Asselberghs is currently working on a long-term film project at the film department of the LUCA School of Arts, where he has been teaching for two decades. Through the realization of a film essay, he probes the relationship between attention and distraction in the film theatre and the classroom. Throughout the creation process, Sabzian reports on his accompanying reading and writing. On a regular basis, Asselberghs selects an existing text that interests him and that he himself provides with an accompanying text. In this second instalment, he probes possible overlaps between teaching and film-watching by means of Berichten uit een klas [Reports from a Classroom], Objectieve Melancholie [Objective Melancholy] and other key essays by the Belgian critic Dirk Lauwaert. He also reminisces about Lauwaert’s overlooked Filmparties.

The film was barely finished, and the “Farrebique affair” began – the selection committee of the first Cannes Film Festival eliminated the film from the competition […]. “That Farrebique will not be going to Cannes is an outright scandal,” Maurice Bessy declared [...]. “Although some reservations could be made about the arbitrary conception of the subject,” wrote Georges Sadoul, “Farrebique clearly had its place at the festival, whereas the particularly incontinent logorrhea of A Lover’s Return should have been refused even a back seat.” But the screenwriter of this last film, Henri Jeanson, was the very committee member who fought for the rejection of Farrebique, although he denies that: “Farrebique was not presented to us for approval. I am, admittedly, one of those who find this film boring. I don’t consider cow dung to be photogenic material. I agree that I may be wrong, but I protest against those who claim in bad faith that Farrebique was rejected.”

TV-programme producers occasionally try to make their works available for repeated viewing in addition to one-off screenings. As is the case with Voyage à Paris, which is like a beautiful poem you want to read several times, or a piece of music you want to hear several times. This visual essay contains a couple of passages you will remember especially well, transitions that are so intriguing that you will want to further savour them. 

Shadi Abdel Salam carried two cultures within him: he was born and raised in Alexandria, and his mother and maternal ancestors came from Al-Minieh. He travelled in two worlds: that of the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria and its rich Hellenic heritage, and that of Al-Minieh, the pearl of Upper Egypt, imbued with traditions and customs drawing their rigidity from distant pharaonic origins. Although he looked like a noble cavalier, with matching gentleman-like qualities, fluent in English, French and Italian, he always remained that austere son of Upper Egypt, linked to his ancestors who lie inside the tombs dug into the hills of Thebes by a very long history.

So, your film is above all a reflection on the destiny of a national culture?

Absolutely. The crime narrative was just a pretext. Besides, The Mummy is a film that I felt, and therefore constructed, on various levels.

“My films are like fables, and reality is their backdrop. They imitate the simple form of a diary, they are autobiographical, since they often deal with a quest for identity and a search for origins, and I often appear in them as a subject and as a character.”

Brussel-transit is ontegenzeglijk een autobiografisch verhaal. Niet helemaal documentair, noch helemaal fictief, niet helemaal het heden, noch helemaal een reconstructie neemt de film zowat al die vormen aan, maar ook iets ondefinieerbaars en ongrijpbaars dat met de herinnering te maken heeft. 

André Bazin is sometimes called “the inventor of film criticism”. Entire generations of film critics and filmmakers, especially those associated with the Nouvelle Vague, are indebted to his writings on film. Film opens a “window on the world”, according to Bazin. His writings would also be important for the development of the auteur theory. Bazin: “Jean Renoir was unquestionably our greatest director. The past tense that has just flown out of my pen here does not mean – thank God! – that Renoir has passed away, only that he is no longer ours.”

De gerestaureerde versie van Chantal Akermans Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) liet me toe een detail op te merken dat me nog niet eerder was opgevallen. Door het beeld te bevriezen herkende ik het omslag van het boek dat Jeannes zoon Sylvain aan het lezen is. Het boek is meer dan een gewoon rekwisiet want de jongen gaat volledig op in het werk en grijpt elke gelegenheid aan om verder te lezen. Wat moeten we aanvangen met de haast onzichtbare, verborgen, mysterieuze aanwezigheid van dit object of verhaal in de film? Het zou te ver gaan om het boek te beschouwen als een mise en abyme van de film, maar het kan in deze tekst wel dienen als een sleutel om te onderzoeken in welk picturaal universum Sylvian en zijn moeder precies vastzitten.

Ventura, die in eerdere films alleen zichzelf speelde, verschijnt in Vitalina Varela als een volwaardige acteur die een dubbelrol speelt die niet bij hem past en die ontleend is aan de wereld van fictie: een gevallenpriesterpersonage dat doet denken aan de ellendige plattelandspriester van Bernanos en Bresson; maar tegelijkertijd ook een bevoorrechte getuige van het leven van de overledene, achter wie men soms de schaduw van Joseph Cotton/Leland in het bejaardentehuis denkt te zien rondwaren, ondanks het feit dat Citizen Kane niet tot het pantheon van Pedro Costa behoort.

In the series ‘One Spectator Among Others’ Herman Asselberghs and Gerard-Jan Claes invite various passionate film lovers to elaborate on their viewing practice by email. Filmmakers, artists, critics, researchers, authors, programmers, cinemagoers, TV enthusiasts, Netflixers, YouTubers, torrent users... The series takes off with Herman Asselberghs as guinea pig. He makes films, writes about film, teaches at the film department of LUCA School of Arts/Sint-Lukas Brussels and is co-founder of the artist-run production and distribution platform Auguste Orts.