Sabzian Celebrates Tenth Anniversary!
On October 9, Sabzian celebrates its tenth anniversary. What began as a modest platform for film criticism and cinephilic debate has grown over the past decade into a leading medium with national and international resonance. Founded in 2014 by Belgian filmmakers, Sabzian offers profound and multifaceted reflections on contemporary film culture and bridges the gap between national and international cinephilia, between past and present, and between individual and collective imagination. Anyone who loves film and, more than mere entertainment, wants to explore its past, present, and future will find in Sabzian a reliable guide in the current landscape of cinema, festivals, and streaming sites. Sabzian takes thinking about cinema seriously, away from projected certainties, as an ongoing history of forms and narratives to relentlessly and endlessly broaden the spectrum of futures of cinema.
With over 900 published articles written by a diverse group of authors and contributors, Sabzian has built a solid reputation as a collective that brings together filmmakers, critics, and film lovers alike. Sabzian publishes texts, interviews, issues and collections and translates texts, builds a database of film pages, compiles a calendar, publishes press releases, organizes events and film screenings – both offline and online – and releases publications...
To celebrate this anniversary in style, this fall Sabzian is organizing a series of screenings and events in collaboration with various partners. From mid-October to February, a retrospective of the work of the Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan van der Keuken will run at CINEMATEK. In November, two screenings of early short films by the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami are planned at Cinema RITCS and KASKcinema. We will close the cinephile year at Bozar in December with a new edition of the State of Cinema, at which the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa will be our guest of honor.
Finally, we would like to thank everyone who has made Sabzian possible in the last years: all the authors, collaborators, volunteers, students, guests, donors, partners, and funders. The reviews, essays, and conversations that appear on the platform resonate not only within Belgium but also far beyond. This tenth anniversary is also a tribute to the collective work Sabzian has shaped since its inception. We cordially invite the press and public to celebrate this anniversary with us!
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On the occasion of Sabzian’s tenth anniversary, Un chant d’amour (1950) by Jean Genet will be available for 24 hours in our Screening Room on Wednesday, October 9 from 12h00 (CET). In this voyeuristic visual poem, prisoners locked in their cells are also trapped in their homoerotic fantasies. The film was not authorized for public screenings until the mid-seventies, its circulation mainly limited to circles of erotic and pornographic film collectors, as well as the experimental film world. Jonas Mekas was even arrested and beaten by the American police for showing it. Michael Koresky writes: “This silent, black-and-white short from 1950 is remembered too often for the scandals and legal battles it incited and not enough for its artistry, for how much tenderness, fear, and sensuality it conveys without a single spoken word.
