Cinema Festival

Boris Lehman general tour!Spam organized a film festival around the Belgian filmmaker Boris Lehman who came May 20, 21 and 22 to present two feature films and 5 short films in four different locations. We were welcomed by the FJT The Birds, THE Scene and the Roommate from Jura.

Like Adrienne
16 mm – color – 115 minutes – Belgium – 2000

Ce film est un cadeau. Cadeau fait à une dame. Une dame que j’aime et qui m’aime. Adrienne n’est pas ma mère. Elle n’est pas juive.
She is 77 years old, the age limit for reading the adventures of Tintin.

The film is divided into seven lessons and a few digressions: the swimming lesson, the driving lesson, the cooking lesson, the sewing lesson, the botany lesson, the etiquette lesson, and the cinema lesson, the only one given by Boris, while all the others are given by Adrienne.

Adrienne lived in Iran for fourteen years, with her husband, a surgeon.
working in the holy city of Meched. When her husband died, she
revient a Bruxelles près de ses enfants et petits enfants. Ayant appris la langue persane et s’étant attachée à recueillir et à traduire les contes populaires de la région du Khorassan, elle a fini par mettre un peu d’orient dans sa poche et beaucoup de soleil dans ses récits. Si le cinéma a peut-être changé la vie d’Adrienne, Adrienne, elle, aura travaillé à changer la mienne.

Dumb as a carp
16 mm – color – 38 minutes – Belgium – 1987

De l’étang à l’assiette, le trajet et le destin d’une carpe, parmi d’autres. Celle-ci sera mangée farcie au cours d’un repas de fête. La carpe farcie «à la polonaise», appelée aussi en yiddish «Gefilte Fish», est un plat traditionnel chez les Juifs ashkénazes. Il est préparé sucré et servi froid au début du repas. La tête du poisson est réservée au chef de famille.

Tourné à Bruxelles, au moment du Nouvel An juif (Roch Hachana), le film s’attache à montrer les préparatifs culinaires, ainsi que le rituel et les prières qui les accompagnent, mettant l’accent sur le sacrifice du poisson et sur la mort concentrationnaire.

“In your fishponds, in your ponds
Carp, may you live long
Does death forget you,
Fish of melancholy »
(Guillaume Apollinaire)

Things that connect me to beings
16 mm – color – 15 minutes – Belgium – 2010

The film presents itself as a Prévert-style inventory. His title
s’inspire des Notes de Chevet, de l’écrivain japonaise Sei Shônagon qui fut dans la première moitié du 11e siècle dame d’honneur au
service de l’impératrice Teishi. On pense évidemment à Georges
Perec, major writer of the OuLiPo group, but also at Dada or Fluxus. The images and words follow one another like in a poem.

Since René Magritte's famous “ceci n'est pas une pipe”, we know well that the evidence is misleading, that words, like images, can be diverted from their primary function.

Nommer, énumérer, c’est-à-dire inventer l’objet par l’image et le mot, en le filmant. Acte de création, comme Dieu fit au début avec le Ciel et la Terre, avec Adam et Eve.

I show the camera some objects from my daily life (which are also allegories) that belonged to others that I loved or
encountered to finally observe and conclude that “I am the sum of everything others have given me”.

Musée sentimental dont je serais le gardien. Chaque objets, chaque « chose » à son histoire. Quel lien mystérieux peut-il y avoir entre ces choses ? Entre ces choses et moi ?

The last (s)scene, The Gospel according to St. Boris
16 mm – color – 14 minutes – Belgium – 2003

The dialogues are taken from the Gospel according to St. John.
Les apôtres sont presque tous des cinéastes, amis (et disciples) de Boris Lehman venus jouer devant la dernière maison-atelier d’artiste, restée debout face aux nouveaux bâtiments du Parlement européen. Le rôle de Judas est tenu par Claudio Pazienza et Boris Lehman incarne le Christ. La mise en scène est inspirée par la fresque peinte par Léonard de Vinci dans le couvent de Santa Maria delle Grazie à Milan.

The film was shot in a few hours, on a Sunday morning in front of an incredible, almost Hollywood setting, in a street completely razed by real estate developers, just before the police arrived.

Magnum Begynasium Bruxellense
16 mm – black and white – 145 minutes – Belgium – 1978

Living chronicle of the inhabitants of the Béguinage district, as well as
named by what it is located on the site of the former
Brussels beguinage. Conceived as an encyclopedic inventory, the film is made up of around thirty chapters nested within each other like so many pieces of a puzzle, or even like a termite mound with numerous and crossed galleries. It takes place in space and in the interstices of a day, beginning at dawn and ending at night.

A Beautiful cruise
16 mm – black and white – 35 minutes – Belgium – 2008

Filmed in Paris and St-Denis s/Seine.
A boat trip to celebrate a birthday with friends
becomes the pretext for a film shoot. Family film which very quickly turns into a fable and a biblical tale. This is the story of Noah's Ark, braving the flood and saving some remains
of humanity, which washes up on the Mounts of Ararat.

With a host of stars and the author himself, in the role of Noah. HAS take in the first and second degree. With humor and
gravity.

Red MUDH
16 mm – black and white – 35 minutes – Belgium – 2006

Return of the son (Julien) to his father (Arié), who offers him rabbit as a meal, but the son only wants honey. The father goes to look for some in the hive but gets stuck inside. Fairy tale or pastiche, it will all end badly. By the murder of the father. Then comes a hunter who will try to bring some order and who will end up praising chocolate.

Piece by Claude Schmitz created at the sponge factory in 2006.