#60: Look after all tools. The moment it looks like things are missing it means that things are missing.|#57: Volunteers must be: cared for / hands on / ready to learn / willing to share / in it to win it / show new or old tricks.|#29: We make the program for the artist that we exhibit.|#17: An exhibition is never finished.|#65: No excuses: Thursday morning, team meeting.|#74: Last one out turns of the lights.|#10: Don’t be obsessed with numbers.|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|#132: Things will always look weird when you’re the first doing it.|#117: Consider design, organisational structures and architecture as programme.|#39: Be the early stepping stone in an artist’s career|#99: Evolve according to changing needs.|#6: Demand that visitors are active.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#16: Kunsthal Gent will always be a construction site.|#107: Build a community / scene.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#137: Use the publication as programming space|#44: No name tags at dinner.|#81: Things come alive when there is friction.|#15: Kunsthal Gent aims to be an extension of public space.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#26: More artists, less borders.|#54: What about disabled artists?|#60: Look after all tools. The moment it looks like things are missing it means that things are missing.|#57: Volunteers must be: cared for / hands on / ready to learn / willing to share / in it to win it / show new or old tricks.|#29: We make the program for the artist that we exhibit.|#17: An exhibition is never finished.|#65: No excuses: Thursday morning, team meeting.|#74: Last one out turns of the lights.|#10: Don’t be obsessed with numbers.|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|#132: Things will always look weird when you’re the first doing it.|#117: Consider design, organisational structures and architecture as programme.|#39: Be the early stepping stone in an artist’s career|#99: Evolve according to changing needs.|#6: Demand that visitors are active.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#16: Kunsthal Gent will always be a construction site.|#107: Build a community / scene.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#137: Use the publication as programming space|#44: No name tags at dinner.|#81: Things come alive when there is friction.|#15: Kunsthal Gent aims to be an extension of public space.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#26: More artists, less borders.|#54: What about disabled artists?|
This website uses cookies to improve your user experience. More info

07.11.2022 20:00

Filmprogramme by Artcinema OFFoff

Price: € 8

Olivier Smolders: 'Masks' (première)

Art Cinema OFFoff welcomes Belgian filmmaker Olivier Smolders. Ten years ago, he was our guest for a screening of a selection of his work and a conversation that can be picked up and continued this evening.

They present the Belgian premiere of Smolders’ new film, Masques. The filmmaker chooses to combine this work with La Part de l’ombre (2014) and a film that made a strong impression on him, Diane Wellington (2010) by Arnaud des Pallières.

“I have been wanting to film masks for quite a few years now. But I couldn’t find my point of entry for this film, the angle that would give me my unique approach. And then the death of my parents suddenly gave a different light to the project. I took that as my starting point, how personal grief brought me back to the thematic of masks. Different stories of mutilated faces or hidden faces added themselves and defined more clearly the path I was taking. In the end it is no longer really a film about the masks but rather about the loss of the faces of those we love.”

In his work, Smolders often questions the status of the image in film and photography. La Part de l’ombre tells the story of Hungarian photographer Oskar Benedek, who mysteriously disappeared in 1944. Far from a simple biography, this film “en voie de disparition” unfolds as a vertiginous meditation on our fascination with images and ultimately the truth of this story itself. Smolders originally intended to construct the film solely from photographs, inspired by Chris Marker’s film essay of about the same length, La Jetée (1962).

Diane Wellington is part of a constellation of films in which Arnaud des Pallières – of whom we showed Disneyland, mon vieux pays natal (2001) in the past – depicts American stories from the 20th century, reinvented from the Prelinger Archives (Poussières d’Amérique, 2011; Journal d’Amérique, 2022). Diane Wellington uses archival footage and intertitles to explore the disappearance of a girl in South Dakota in the 1930s. The film is loosely based on a true story collected by American writer Paul Auster in the book I Thought My Father Was God (2001)

––– Followed by a Q&A with Olivier Smolders.
––– Watch Jan Peeters’ 2011 conversation with Olivier Smolders in OFFoff, or read the bilingual transcription on Sabzian.

Olivier Smolders (°1956) is one of the most original voices in Belgian cinema. Since the 1980s, he has developed an aesthetically rigorous body of work of mainly thematically dark, personal and essayistic short films, often in black and white. Based in Liège, he graduated at the university there in Romance philology and at the Brussels film school INSAS, and went on to become a lecturer at both schools. His films have been the subject of many international awards and retrospectives.

Programme

Olivier Smolders: 'Masques'
BE • 2022 • 23' • colour & z/w • digital

Olivier Smolders: 'La Part de l'ombre'
BE • 2014 • 28' • colour & z/w • digital


Arnaud des Pallières: 'Diane Wellington'
FR • 2010 • 16' • colour & z/w • digital


Q&A Olivier Smolders

La part de lombre1
Masques 1024x576