It is a school holiday, carnival and spring is coming. Three times hurray and so Monokino gives a film party together with Visite, the bustling film platform from Antwerp.
DER KREISLAUF
KATRIEN VERMEIRE — BE, 2014 – video — 30’
PLEZIERTREINEN
HENRI STORCK — BE, 1930 – 16mm — 8’
TER HARING-VISSERIJ
HENRI STORCK — BE, 1930 – 16mm with live music — 15’
DE SOCIOLOOG
LUC BEYER DE RYKE — BE, 1972 – video — 7’
| 28/02 | 20:00 | Vrijstaat O | Oostende |
For a hundred years, in the summer months, a unique game is played on the Belgian beaches. When the weather is nice, a variety of little shops – mounds of sand, pits, sometimes no more than a flattened ring – display colourful flowers. They are part of a flourishing trade. These flowers do not care for water or rain, they are made out of paper. This film follows the young players from very close.
‘Pleziertreinen’: Everything is a question of looking. What happens in the sand? In the film we can speak of sketches and portraits, of small pointillist brushstrokes in an amused and warm description of a summer Sunday at the seaside.
‘Ter Haring-visserij’: Men at work, their movements, their production cycle, machines and tools, an anthropology of manual labour.
‘De socioloog’: In this account, which was broadcast during the television news of June 29th 1972, professor Léo Moulin, spoke, not without any condescension, about the habits of the Belgian on holiday. Does the Belgian go on vacation, why and when?
SUPPORT — We currently work without subsidies, so your support is more than welcome and literally brings light to the screen:
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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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