BENELUX Film Watchlist

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet, but something happens that changes her safe routine.

Instructional film about Rotterdam, the former biggest harbor in the world, including the myth of the Flying Dutchman within a hybrid format.

Fictional re-enactments about the early years in Belgium of the director's parents, Jewish immigrants from Poland, and scenes taken in modern Brussels in this elliptical experimental feature.

The documentary is the start of a trilogy and follows the family Sjamsuddin, existing of three generations in the slums of Jakarta Indonesia.

Three generations of one family weather the challenges of living in modern-day Indonesia, the largest Muslim community on the globe.

Position among the Stars, the final part of a trilogy, follows the award- winning documentaries Eye of the Day and Shape of the Moon (Joris Ivens Award IDFA 2004 - World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize Sundance 2005). Through the eyes of grandmother Rumidjah, a poor old Christian woman living in the slums of Jakarta, we see the economical changing society of Indonesia and the influence of globalization reflected in the life of her juvenile granddaughter Tari and her sons Bakti and Dwi. Director and DOP Leonard Retel Helmrich follows this family in a unique way with his breathtaking Single Shot Cinema-technique. Without interviews and voice-overs, Leonard will bring you closer to Indonesia than you will ever get.

A man gets delivered a barrel containing a fairy who goes around happily murdering all kind of upstanding citizens.

From 1942 to 1944, Henri Storck composed his Symphonie paysanne, in which he describes the day to day life and rituals of the farmers on the rhythm of the seasons. The film is a poem to nature, a lyrical masterpiece on life and death, on animals and plants, on man and his labor.

What was supposed to be a documentary to show the progressive nature of Belgium in regards to its immigration policy, turned out to be something completely the opposite. Struck by what he saw, the director decided to take the funds issued to him by the Belgian government to make a film which showed life as it really was in the mining region of Borinage. The promise of a better life for the immigrants, which the Belgian government wanted to show, was nowhere to be found in this film. Instead, we look in on reality of life in Borinage, with staggering unemployment, and a feeling by many of displacement and homesickness.

A documentary examining the effect of a man dragged to death on the residents in Jasper, Texas.

Chantal Akerman followed famous Choreographer Pina Bausch and her company of dancers, The Tanzteater Wuppertal, for five weeks while they were on tour in Germany, Italy and France. Her objective was to capture Pina Bausch's unparalleled art not only on stage but also behind the scenes.

The tale of an Occidental merchant whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice.

Akerman spends a month in Tel Aviv, in an apartment by the sea, contemplating her family, her Jewish identity and her childhood.

I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE: THE CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN explores some of the Belgian filmmaker's 40 plus films, and from Brussels to Tel Aviv, from Paris to New York, it charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shared with Marianne Lambert her cinematic trajectory, one that never ceased to interrogate the meaning of her existence. And with her editor and long-time collaborator, Claire Atherton, she examines the origins of her film language, and aesthetic stance.

Liège, Belgium. Sandra is a factory worker who discovers that her workmates have opted for a EUR1,000 bonus in exchange for her dismissal. She has only a weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses in order to keep her job.

Typically controversial speech by psychoanalyst/philosopher Lacan is disrupted by a student, ridiculing such public intellectuals. Lacan refuses to allow security to haul off the student, lets him speak and incorporates such criticisms into his presentation. The packed performance took place at the Catholic University of Louvain in September 1972, with Lacan interrelating death, language, love, alienation, paranoia and life. His talk is followed by a probing interview of Lacan on his concepts of psychoanalysis, conducted by the director, Belgian documentarian Francoise Wolff. One of only 2 known filmed appearances by Lacan, both by Wolff, who also made documentaries of Albert Einstein and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

A complex and complicated artist, Georges Remi created one of the most famous characters in the world, Tintin, for young readers. With exceptional access to the archives of Studios Hergé and Moulinsart, this program looks at Remi's life and the way he changed the art of comic strips.

A director, producer and assistant take the Trans-Europ-Express from Paris to Antwerp, where they brainstorm ideas for a film about a greenhorn drug smuggler and a kinky prostitute.

An orientalist professor researching Delacroix's North African work becomes entangled in an S&M waking dream in Morocco.

Tribute to the poet Francis Ponge whom Jean-Daniel Pollet considers as "natural".

The central character in Rooksporen is a woman who finds herself facing an interrogator. Around these interrogation scenes are scenes in which 26 witnesses (from A to Z) are introduced: first in their houses and then in a space adjacent to the interrogation room. The questioner has an ambiguous identity and function: he directs his questions at the woman and then turns away only listening and watching as a sounding-board, to the witnesses. And the witnesses also have an elusive identity. Who or what they are remains unclear, they exist thanks to the sensuality and/or obscurity of their language. It is also far from clear what the woman is accused of. Most witnesses eventually think she is guilty, but what of remains the question. The only thing which is not in doubt is that she is an eccentric. Whenever it looks as if she can be tied down, she gets off as each witness tries to involve her.

A woman is immersed within a landscape in summertime and she adores her beloved one in everything that emerges from her surroundings.

A young mother, alone with her daughter, confides in a friend who happens to be the director herself. Chantal Akerman, although she sympathizes with the mother, does not say a word.