An adventurous and erotic quest for beauty set to the rhythm of Richard Wagner, Zarah Leander, and Sergei Eisenstein. Eric de Kuyper presents his film in the city where his heart lies: Ostend, of course.
PINK ULYSSES
ERIC DE KUYPER — NL, 1990 – 4K – 98’
Warning: this film contains explicit images (16+).
| 07/02 | 20:00 | KAAP | Ostend |
Eric de Kuyper is undoubtedly the most famous “wash-ashore” in Ostend. In 1990, he describes in De hoed van tante Jeannot (Aunt Jeannot’s Hat) how, as a little boy, he is entrusted to a friendly truck driver headed for the coast. The driver takes him from Brussels to Ostend, where the world literally ends via Belgium’s first highway. de Kuyper spends his summers in the “Queen of Seaside Resorts,” where he falls in love with friends and with the city—a place he continues to return to throughout his life. The beautiful stories of those summers in Ostend find their way into Aan zee: taferelen uit de kinderjaren (By the Sea: Scenes from Childhood), a classic of Flemish literature.
Even when he “flees” Flanders for Paris, and later via Nijmegen to Kranenburg, he remains loyal to Ostend. He keeps a small apartment near Middelkerke, where he spends his summers. His heart belongs to the seaside city: in the 1990s, he passionately defends it alongside other Ostend residents when its galleries, the Art Deco beach lido, the casino, or other heritage landmarks are threatened by the city council’s “development” plans.
In addition to being a writer, television maker, professor, and opera, dance, and film critic, de Kuyper is also a filmmaker. His most successful and undoubtedly most exuberant film is Pink Ulysses, which was recently restored by Eye. The film combines many of de Kuyper’s passions: opera and classical music, film history, literature, and the male body.
It is an anti-conformist, radical, yet sublime reinterpretation of the Odyssey. In the opening scene, we see the Greek hero ironing his pants in a small apartment while Pars by Yvonne Georges, a popular Belgian feminist singer and actress from the 1920s, plays in the background. This is the start of a journey we take with Odysseus, one told through hundreds of other stories: Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1926) depicts the sea voyage, Jean Delannoy’s L’eternel retour (1943) tells the love story between Penelope and Odysseus, and Luigi Romano Borgnetto’s La Caduta di Troia (1911) highlights the fall of Troy. It is, however, not a montage of film fragments; the whole is embedded in a powerful mise-en-scène reminiscent of the work of Werner Schroeter.
Pink Ulysses is an exhilarating journey through film history, via opera and visual art, bathed in eroticism. The sexuality is hypnotic, magical, and, like the film itself, an invitation to travel, dream, and live.
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With the support of Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds and KAAP.
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Artistic coordination: Anouk De Clercq, Godart Bakkers
General coordination: Ditte Claus
Artistic team: Eric de Kuyper, Xavier Garcia Bardon
Production team: Bob Mees, Jef Declercq, Johan Opstaele, Noah Heylen
Communication: Cynthia Vandenbruaene
Graphic design: Michaël Bussaer. Webdesign: Dominique Callewaert.
With the support of Auguste Orts, CINEMATEK, KAAP, KASK School of Arts Gent, Onderzoeksfonds Universiteit Gent, Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds.
Whoever walks in Ostend today is confronted with a fantastic eclecticism: a brutal grey apartment block exists next to the glorious Thermae Palace. The mighty, almost Stalinist, building of De Grote Post dominates the Hendrik Serruyslaan. A former department store houses a museum for contemporary art. Belle-époque houses are hidden in the quiet but stately streets.
In 2017, one void struck artist Anouk De Clercq: that glorious film culture of Henri Storck, James Ensor or Raoul Servais had disappeared from the streets. With the closure of the Rialto cinema, the last independent cinema from the Ostend cinema circuit also disappeared. Against such an extraordinary backdrop, with the sea as a large projection surface for images, stories and histories, that is such a shame.
And so the idea of Monokino ripens: one room, marked by an equally fantastic eclecticism, where cinema can be itself again. One room where long and short films, film classics, auteur cinema, video art, experimental films, animation, or the work of young makers can find a place. Monokino shows, questions, responds, engages in conversation, invites, welcomes, puts in perspective. Monokino is a place of, by and for people from Ostend, for professionals and enthusiasts, for young and old, for those from here and those from there.
The films that Monokino wants to show don’t only live on the screen. They also spread between residents, spectators, and makers. In that sense, Monokino is also Kopfkino: a mental cinema, where images get the chance to live and multiply.
That’s how Monokino drifts nomadically through those eclectic streets of Ostend and settles in the heads and hearts of the people of Ostend. Soon it’ll moor for good.
Monokino wants to drive cinema into the 21st century and illuminate the adventurous side of film. While we strive for a permanent place as anchorage for cinefiles from Ostend and beyond, Monokino operates as a nomadic film platform.
The sea is Monokino’s favourite projection surface for images, stories and histories. In anticipation of our next screening, we’ve started to collect a list of films in which the sea plays a main or supporting role. Can you think of a film that’s not already on our list? We’d love to hear about it via info@monokino.org.
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