À l’usage des vivants

Zinal, a small town in the Swiss Alps, looks straight up toward the melting glaciers of the Couronne Impériale. The townspeople struggle with nihilistic indifference. When the threat is so immediate, and their powerlessness so great, can their response be anything other than cynicism? Then a paraglider falls mysteriously from the sky, and Zinal starts to change.

Eight thousand five hundred kilometres lie between the Amazon and the Ardennes. In his home country of Brazil, filmmaker Diego looks at the inaccessible forest from the outside. Its Belgian counterpiece, however, is easier to explore.

In what one could call Jonas Mekas’ first video blog, the Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker reflects on his life and the art of cinema and representation.

A portrait of contemporary suburban youth seeking to invent new contours of collective identity, against the backdrop of France in the throes of recession.

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.

Through dancing, The Motherfucker’s Birthday shows the evil of the dictator and the horror people endure under powerful political leaders. The film presents dancing, a universal and uniquely human activity often representing joy, with eerie footage of Saddam and his sons’ torture tools while they dance.

In Magic, a portrait of Joris, images sourced from different periods in time are glued together. Worn-out VHS footage filmed by the artist’s father is placed beside 8mm images she filmed herself. Both have the same subject: one boy, both a son and a brother. Connecting images of then and now, a new narrative of remembering opens up.