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part of
double bill #16

Gestes du repas

Luc de Heusch, Belgium, 1958, 23’

This satirical ethnographic film shows eating Belgians in diverse contexts. Gestes du repas captures authentic moments starring workers, peasants, and middle-class people in their most familiar habitat. Dinner scenes at weddings, funerals, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve portray a country: loneliness and community alternate, just as wealth and poverty.

Bio Luc de Heusch

Luc de Heusch (1927-2012) was a Belgian filmmaker, writer and social anthropologist. He was a prominent figure both in art and academia, especially in Francophone milieus. As a filmmaker, he started out as an assistant to Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck. In 1951, using the pseudonym Luc Zangrie, he directed his first film Perséphone, the only film produced under the auspices of the artistic movement CoBrA. He produced a series of films on major artists such as Pierre Alechinsky, Christian Dotremont, Reinhoud, James Ensor, René Magritte, Pierre Lahaut, and Michel de Ghelderode, among others. Along with his friend Jean Rouch, de Heusch was one of the most prominent advocates of visual anthropology, making several documentaries on various parts of Central and West Africa. His other films include Gestes du repas (1958), a film on eating habits in Belgium, Libre examen (1968), a film about the student revolt of the 1960s and Jeudi on chantera comme dimanche (1967), his only fiction film. (Avila)

Gestes du repas (Luc de Heusch, 1958)
Gestes du repas (Luc de Heusch, 1958)
essay
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Ceci n’est pas un steak frites

Luc de Heusch’s Gestes du repas (1958)

Bjorn Gabriels
08.06.2024

In Gestes du repas, Luc de Heusch (1927-2012) shows a series of Belgian eating rituals, from breastfeeding to a funeral dinner, from meals in the factory canteen to a cold buffet held right under a Last Supper at the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. De Heusch envisioned his short documentary as a portrait of Belgian society. More than merely a symphony of sipping, smacking, and slurping, a succession of social codes is portrayed in various sections of the population. Rituals interested both the anthropologist and the filmmaker De Heusch, who worked in a time full of upheavals in the relationship between those two disciplines.

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Credits

Script
Jacques Delcorde, Luc de Heusch
Cast
Dario Moreno, Paul Anrieu
Camera
Charles Abel
Sound
Paul Leponce
Music
Fernand De Geneffe
230
documentary portrait

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Water and Salt

Luisa Mello, Belgium, Brazil, 2019, 10’

A journey through the consciousness of a woman whose country is under threat from a fascist government.

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Waithood

Louisiana Mees-Fongang, Belgium, 2019, 21’

In Athens, five youngsters avoid waiting for an empty future by seeking entertainment in the luxurious Airbnb establishments that one of them is cleaning for a meagre fee.

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Note on Multitude

Ibro Hasanović, Belgium, Kosovo, 2015, 8’

Intimate, emotional, and sometimes violent moments of farewell: men, women, and children leave their homes for an (unknown) future as migrants.

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Devotion

Cynthia Madansky, Turkey, 2003, 34’

A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of rituals.

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Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

Louis Lumière, France, 1895, 1’

A man opens the large gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France, in 1895. Through the gate and a smaller door next to it, workers stream out for lunch. Once all the workers have left the factory, the gatekeeper closes the gate again.

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A Letter to Mohamed

Christine Moderbacher, Belgium, Tunisia, Austria, 2013, 35’

This is a cinematic letter to the title character, who left Tunisia and now lives in Belgium. Shot in the first year after the Tunisian revolution, this is a poetic journey through a troubled landscape. Between order and chaos, the film reveals a land of disillusionment but also of humour and hope.

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Pirate Boys

Pol Merchan, Germany, 2018, 13’

Punk author Kathy Acker’s work is the starting point for a conversation about gender identity and body transformation and is linked to the punk movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

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This Day Won’t Last

Mouaad el Salem, Belgium, Tunisia, 2020, 25’

In this urgent diary film about longing for freedom and community, the filmmaker reflects on the individual yet collective experience of growing up queer in Tunisia today.

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