Categorie: Nieuws

“My father shook hands with his sons”

Usually, life is exuberantly celebrated in Ineke Houtman’s films (MADELIEF, POLLEKE). But in THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING that seems a difficult challenge, with a father who understands every sign of joy and cheerfulness as an act of rebellion against God’s omnipotence. Religion serves to keep people in line, harshly if necessary. That applies to Thomas, whose imaginative mind does not necessarily always drift towards God. And for his mother, whose small bursts of independence are punished with physical force. In the name of faith.

Even the design of THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING – presented at Filem’On by director Ineke Houtman – is shackled by strictness: colourless interiors, rigid frames… like the faces of the statues, sternly overlooking the road to church. Thomas needs help to rebel against father’s strict religious regime: from a colourful neighbour, a loquacious aunt, and even from Jesus – “Just call me Jesus” – himself. They give Thomas comfort when taking a beating or when mother has another black eye. Thomas knows what he wants, to be happy. And happiness starts with not being afraid anymore.

What does religion mean to children today? Can they still connect with it?

Ineke Houtman: The film is not primarily about religion, but about any form of extremist thinking and how to rebel against it. That is recognisable. I noticed it at the screening in Giffoni, in a region that is still very religious. When Thomas said ‘no’ to his father, a standing ovation followed, because he dared to confront someone more powerful than himself. His father talks all the time about Exodus and the plagues of Egypt, and with his imagination, Thomas puts them into practice to thwart him.

What are male issues?

Houtman: Huh?

This is what the father says to his son: ‘Come to me if you have any male issues.’

Houtman: It’s all about hormones and sexuality. Religion can be used to preserve the established order and keep men on their pedestal – securing your place atop the monkey rock. But nature and love are stronger than anything else. Which you see at the end, in the way Thomas’ mother is able to forgive her husband.

Already in the opening scene you depict dad as an unpleasant man, with an authoritarian tone of voice.

Houtman: You immediately feel the intense atmosphere in this house where one man decides everything and where you have to be constantly on guard. A permanent threat hangs over this family, because something unpredictable can always happen. And above all, there is shame – which is why women and children in an abusive household often find it so difficult to talk about it.

The role is played by Daan Schuurmans, who has portrayed such gentle, sympathetic characters in films such as BONKERS and POLLEKE.

Houtman: Daan is such a sweet man. He found it difficult to play this role and to show the film to his children. He himself is very cuddly. At the end of the film, father shakes his son’s hand; Daan would have preferred a hug, but I didn’t let him. His character is not that far along yet, and this was not the right era for it. My father shook hands with his sons, while daughters were allowed a kiss. That was how things were in those days.

Mum, though very sweet, does little to protect her children.

Houtman: She is submissive to her husband; her protest is sneaky and passive. Her son is allowed to visit the neighbour, as long as father doesn’t find out. She calls Thomas her ‘little hero’ but she herself does nothing heroic. She allows herself to be beaten! Only at the end does she tell her daughter Margot how sorry she is. She doesn’t realise how much she is protecting her husband… until Auntie Pie confronts her with reality. Then a new realisation grows in her. Suddenly father feels: I should watch out or I will lose my wife and kids.

How do brother and sister relate in such circumstances?

Houtman: Margot doesn’t take her little brother seriously; she’s a bit of a bully, punching and pushing… She’s quite a fierce child and in this she resembles her father. She says: I dare to stand up to you because I am like you. She is the only one for whom father shows respect. He does not hit her even when she disrupts prayer.

The pastor talks about ‘we wretched sinners’. That was the idiom of the church?

Houtman. ‘Good Lord, deliver us miserable sinners.’ When you are addressed like that, what are you worth still? The language of Calvinism, of which the Netherlands is heavily steeped, is humbling to mankind and is about shame, guilt, sin and honour.

Jesus sometimes seeks out Thomas in his room and addresses him in a high-pitched voice.

Houtman: A double role for Sallie Harmsen, who plays both mum and Jesus. Thomas adores his mother. She has an artistic spirit, she likes to laugh and sing,… which Thomas recognises in himself. All Thomas’s fantasies are rooted in reality, so Jesus is given the face of someone he loves, and who, like Jesus, is sacrificed. Jesus is his companion. You cannot deny that the man has said a lot of meaningful things.

What divine image speaks from that strange statue you sometimes picture?

Houtman: In the 1920s, Amsterdam-South was developed by architect Hendrik Berlage. Sculptor Hildo Krop made a series of statues that matched that sleek design and fit our story perfectly. That rigid statue of a father and child expresses a very different ideal of parenting than we are used to today. Did you see there is a similar statue at Heaven’s Gate? That creates a visual rhyme, grafted onto that rigid design.

Every few years you make a wonderful film for children, but one like this we hadn’t seen from you before. How does THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING fit into your oeuvre? 

Houtman: I love this film immensely because it’s about my childhood, about getting away from an authoritarian father and a strict family. When I was 10 years old, my brother died. The film shows the atmosphere at our house – so much pain and tension. Sometimes I would run to the toilet, just to escape from that constriction for a moment. That pain had to get out. Now that has been done, I feel a lot better.

As much of a relief as when the window at Thomas’ house is finally opened!

Houtman: Getting some air! I loved my parents dearly, but their life revolved around their grief. They never asked how it was for us – that was too painful to address. You can’t silence a life that was once there, can you? Shouldn’t it be respected and celebrated? As Ms Van Amersfoort says: it doesn’t all have to make sense. The meaning of religion is that you do it for God. Then you die and have to answer for Him. The meaning of life is that you enjoy what is in it.

The notion that you can enjoy things of beauty is completely new to them. Because ‘happiness is just for idlers and slackers’.

Houtman: From the author Guus Kuijer comes the idea that ‘happiness doesn’t hurt because you get used to it’. But it can take a long time to acknowledge and allow happiness. I am so happy to be adapting the work of a great master like him. Both his lightness and heaviness are standing close to me

That contrast is also in the music of Latvian composer Karlis Auzans, which is often very quiet and minimal.

Houtman: That man is so good! Karlis had written music for a Frankenstein opera, and we reused many passages from it. But because I want everything to be just right, we adapted the lyrics, based on Exodus. Those texts were unravelled by a professor of Latin-Greek, with an eye for all details. Very complex stuff, but fascinating to delve into together with an expert, striving for ultimate precision. No one will notice, but hopefully the audience will feel that great care was taken in all details.

The soundtrack almost inevitably draws on the religious repertoire.

Houtman: We had a house organ in the interior. Such a harmonium was allowed by the church, to accompany yourself when singing psalms. At my request, Karlis Auzans added a few passages for harmonium. I could ask him anything: a menacing cello, an instrument that sounded like frogs… A few minutes later, he then sent me the result. For the sound palette, we always started from the content. We had little to play with because of the rigid tone, so we tried to make the most of every opportunity.

So is the limited colour palette: for most of the film, we find ourselves in a sterile interior. How to tackle that as a filmmaker?

Houtman: With a lot of beige. The three interiors – the houses of Thomas, Mrs Van Amersfoort, and the opposite neighbours – were shot on the same set, but decorated differently each time: very strict, lavish, and modern, respectively. We filmed in a studio in Latvia and there was a budget to bring over one truck with equipment from the Netherlands – 2.5 days on the road. With that stuff, we did the set dressing. The street view is the only lively thing in this house. There is nothing cosy at all; apart from the aquarium and the curtains, everything looks equally Spartan. This is why we make Thomas’ imagination so big – because there is so little, his thoughts are magnified beyond measure. But gradually there comes more colour to the film; at the final party there is even a pink cake.

The film is set in 1961?

Houtman: The era of great change. Mankind went into space in a rocket for the first time and suddenly came close to God – God’s territory was taken by science. Rock ‘n’ roll cautiously peeked around the corner, as you see in that TV clip. Good rock ‘n’ roll, moreover, from the Tielman Brothers, Indonesian guys living in the Netherlands; a wild bunch inspired by Elvis. That was the image of those times.

But you don’t make it into a period piece. 

Houtman: There wasn’t enough room for that in that truck. But I did think about it. I wanted to invest more in that historical art design, to create a modern abstraction, like Tati did. But there are already a lot of period elements included.

Like a dip pen!

Houtman: I learned to write with that!

Gert Hermans

“We’re sort of a ‘low expectations family”

Walking with guests at the Filem’On festival, I hear them talking about the teenage boy who walks with us. How charming he is, and so nice to his mother, and so thoughtful. None of them recognise in him the little boy who, in the Norwegian documentary TODD & SUPER-STELLA, directed by his mother Mari Monrad Vistven, is so unutterably happy because he is going to get a cat. The film follows Todd and his sister Stella for five years. Stella hates things she can’t do. It doesn’t help that big brother Todd can do everything. Todd runs the slowest of the boys in his class, so he loves winning against Stella. Sometimes he dreams of selling her. “I used to fight all the time with my sisters,” says Mari Monrad Vistven, “but now we’re best friends.”

When meeting someone for the first time, do you try to guess their place among the order of siblings?

Mari Monrad Vistven: I sometimes do. I find siblinghood an interesting phenomenon. My mom is married to a single child. Whenever they have an argument, she says: it’s because you’re a single child.

How would you describe the film’s main theme? 

Monrad Vistven: TODD & SUPER-STELLA is a portrait of childhood and the things you have to go through when getting older. And it’s about siblinghood, growing up with someone who’s younger or older than you. You can’t escape from it for the rest of your life, and being born into it, you might easily take up that role. Like Stella deciding to be a cry-baby, or Todd taking up the role of being the smart kid, the one who can fix things. But when he meets his older cousins, all of a sudden he doesn’t seem that smart anymore. The film is taking small everyday-life challenges seriously, and is an alternative to fantasy films about superheroes.

What’s your position? 

Monrad Vistven: We are three, and I am the middle one.

Which made you the noisy one?

Monrad Vistven: You have to be noisy to get noticed… and that’s exactly what I did. The older sister is always number one – “Oh, you’re so clever!” – and the youngest one naturally gets the attention. So I became the loud one. “Look at me… I’m dancing!” It marks you for life. 

How did you pitch your children as being more interesting than all other kids on the planet? 

Monrad Vistven: Luckily I never had to pitch them. My colleague was researching for a film about kids’ friendship, and she told me: there’s something interesting about Todd and Stella and their interaction. I was like: but there are lots of other kids, you know, shouldn’t we make a film about them instead? But she did some test shootings and together we took the project to the Cinekid Script Lab. Our mentor Boudewijn Koole asked me: Why aren’t you directing? This is your project, just do it! Back home, we decided I had to take over from my colleague and be the director.

Now you’re still on speaking terms?

Monrad Vistven: We are. She was totally fine with it.

I have to confess that when I read about the project, I was like: normally a documentary comes with a great idea, and the idea ‘I’m a mother filming my kids and showing how interesting they are’, didn’t sound very convincing at first.

Monrad Vistven: I know! If Stella or Todd would have had some sort of crazy talent or a weird disease, then it could have become a personal thing. But they’re very normal. Making a film about the little aspects of childhood, it could have been about simply any child. That’s the strength of the project; anyone can recognise themselves in the film.

You present them with their minor mistakes and shameful reactions. Pretty confronting. 

Monrad Vistven: It was a huge responsibility that caused me several sleepless nights. Whenever they said “We don’t want this to be on camera”, I stopped. I never pushed that line, except once, because after having seen the rushes, a colleague told me that I often stopped the camera when things started to get interesting. So once I kept going, and Todd just went crazy and started punching his sister. Afterwards they both asked me: Why didn’t you stop us? I apologised and said it was never going to happen again. Every time they got fed up, we stopped. 

Any things you were particularly careful about?

Monrad Vistven: Nakedness, of course. There’s one shot when they’re dancing, and we tried to put some animation over it, and one shot when they’re both sitting in a bathtub. They never reacted to that scene. Yet, I can never be sure that this film won’t do harm later in life. When we were filming, I told them: this will be good for other kids to see. They didn’t believe me then. But when screening the film at festivals abroad and in cinemas in Norway, the young audience always comes up to Todd and Stella to say lovely things, like: “Thank you for sharing, that’s exactly how I argue with my sister”. “It was so good when you said you were afraid, because I am afraid too and now I know that I’m not alone.” And that’s exactly what you dream about when making a film like this. They must have met thousands of kids by now, and never a single negative word has been said.

How to end this project? When to decide: this is the story and I will stop filming them?

Monrad Vistven: At the start of the film, we set some goals. For instance, Stella claims she is afraid to jump, and when she jumped for the first time, it felt like an appropriate final scene. Here, the audience feels that the circle is closed. That was a classic final shot. Meanwhile Todd was growing up, and we didn’t want to take the project into the teenager phase.

Was there a detox period? 

Monrad Vistven: Certainly. It was hard not to pick up the camera for every new and interesting thing happening in their lives. But as a kind of rehab, I took a lot of still pictures of them instead. 

Can you describe a bit the daily life that is depicted in the film?

Monrad Vistven: It’s set in Oslo where we live, and in two family cabins, one hour away from the city.

Every Norwegian that I know has a cabin, but you have two! 

Monrad Vistven: Three cabins, actually!

You’re the poshest Norwegian I’ve ever met! 

Monrad Vistven: Life in general in Norway is good and easy. We live close to the school, there isn’t much traffic, they have their friends nearby, and sometimes we spend a weekend in a cabin. We’re sort of a ‘low expectations’ family, not putting too much pressure on them. School can be tiresome, growing up can be tiresome, being a teenager can be tiresome… and being a parent can be tiresome too. By worldwide standards, I would say we live a very pleasant life.

My most shocking question would be… Were you afraid of being accused of having your little favorite?

Monrad Vistven: Not at all, but I understand what you mean. It is difficult as a parent to treat your kids exactly the same. Because you relate to them so differently. Todd is 15 and it’s so lovely to hang out with him at a festival. Today he was carrying my bag. Ain’t that sweet?

He’s the one with the good intentions. From the very first scene, you see him being sweet and smart. And then there’s Stella, who is often a nuisance. And a snail killer!

Monrad Vistven: Only when a colleague started researching the film, I began to realise the complexity of their characters. Todd has good intentions, but he can react quite angry sometimes. And Stella seems like a nuisance, from Todd’s perspective. She wants to be the clown, she wants you to laugh when she’s trying to make you laugh. But when she isn’t prepared for you to laugh, she hates it. But Stella is very loyal and patient. 

Your visibility changes a bit throughout the film. How visible could you be?

Monrad Vistven: The opening animation establishes us as mom and dad. But I was often behind the camera, filming. Once a photographer got involved, I became more visible. But we had to get my husband in more because he wasn’t around at all. As soon as we took up the camera, he went downstairs. And when he finally turns up, he is wearing crazy sunglasses from some garage sale. I was like, what are you doing? You’re going to be in the cinema! He looks like a clown in the film, a charming clown, I admit.

He doesn’t look like a clown! He looks like a lumberjack, helping his family to survive the harsh winter! I’ve seen a lot of modest, simple joy and happiness. But I also saw one scene with exuberant happiness! 

Monrad Vistven: The coming of the cat! I’m sorry to tell you that happiness didn’t last long. It died after less than two years, right when we started the editing, the day after Christmas. It was heart-breaking and made me grow a few years older. But, we got a new cat now!

Let’s talk about the animations… Why are they there? 

Monrad Vistven: They were not a part of the initial plan. But Stella draws very expressively, that is how she gets her emotions out. As a parent, I sometimes took her anxieties too lightly. Like, “don’t make such a scene, it’s just a tooth being pulled out!” Until I watched her drawings, and I understood: Is this really what you’re thinking? Is this what you are afraid of? I realised there was so much going on inside her head, and this I wanted to include in the film. These animations are a descent into a child’s mind, based upon her drawings and made by Kajsa Næss (TITINA)à, together with a great team at Mikrofilm.

TODD & SUPER–STELLA is another star at the firmament of the Norwegian documentary producer Medieoperatørene.

Monrad Vistven: Mediaoperatørene – which I’m running together with Ingvild Giske and Hanne Myren – has been producing documentaries for 25 years. We mostly do single documentaries for TV or cinema, and some of them are for children. Our projects often present vulnerable people in different situations, like we did with THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN by Benjamin Ree, which is a big hit at Netflix. Throughout these projects, the ethical part has always been our priority. This helped me with my dilemmas about filming my children.

Gert Hermans

“The first time you feel being looked at”

This summer, the 14-year-old girls Malak, Celia and Jae travel with their respective parents to a campsite in the south of France. Great expectations and strong desires await them there. This year, it just might happen: their first steps in love. Documentary makers Anneke de Lind van Wijngaarden and Natalie Bruijns wonder whether reality can match those dreams. In SWEETIES, they observe the girls in their daily walk around the campsite, and talk with them about dreams and deeds. That is, if they can just get their attention away from those darn smartphones.

Anneke de Lind van Wijngaarden enjoys hanging out at Filem’On. “Editing SWEETIES on my computer was a lonely and demanding process. That’s why I now immensely enjoy watching films here while everything is taken care of for me and I get offered delicious food. The way I’m pampered here is amazing.“

I don’t know if you chose the easiest or the hardest topic in the world. The easiest, because everyone can relate to it. Or the hardest, because it is so personal and sensitive.

Anneke de Lind van Wijngaarden: The hardest to make, and the most fun to watch! Relationships are so terribly complicated, with all those videos on YouTube: “How to French kiss” or “Ten signs of whether a boy likes you…”. And as a kid, you still have to stumble into it! In my times, we used to bumble around, but nowadays children start with a whole scenario pre-set in their heads. And yet everyone still bumbles around.

What do people look for in a campsite anyway?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: It‘s a typical Dutch thing. Belgians make jokes about Dutch people stuffing all their belongings in a caravan, so that the vehicle drags on the ground, loaded with tins full of beans. We used to go camping too; I also made out with a French boy and rode with him on the back of his motorbike. It’s a place to briefly escape ordinary life, and then you start trying things out, including in love. You have plenty of time to be bored and reflect. On campsites, the internet connection is often very poor, so you can’t be on your phone all the time. That’s why you have to indulge in other things.

I love how you smuggled snapshots of camping life into the film.

de Lind van Wijngaarden: A man soaping up his caravan, a family who brought the airfryer, so it all starts to look like a comfortable home again… The crew also stayed at that campsite, and as soon as we rolled out of our tents in the morning, we met our entire ‘cast’ in the washrooms. 

You did shoot at one campsite, during one holiday period?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: Yes, but the girls didn’t stay there at the same time – actually, they never met. We wanted to have frank conversations, and together with co-director Natalie Bruijns, we had selected girls who were eager to talk about love. During pre-production, we built up a bond with the family.

How did that selection go?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: We wanted girls with different perspectives on love; it had to be clear that love doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Jae set us a challenge. In the conversations beforehand, she was very open. But at the campsite, she was surprised at the attention she attracted, so we had to take a step back. The other girl, Malak, reflected on the topic in a rather philosophical way. It made me wonder: what is going round in your head? All the girls were around 14 years old – only those twins were a bit younger.

In the end, you did get them all talking.

de Lind van Wijngaarden: The interviews were the basis, over which we edited our footage. So we needed a place where they could speak easily and relaxed. We completely rebuilt our van, with little lights and cushions creating a cosy atmosphere. Then we drove out into the countryside, away from the campsite. Everyone got out of the van, and our quiet conversations began. To create a contemplative atmosphere, we turned up the volume in the headphones, so the girls naturally started talking softer. That’s how we kept the sound so intimate.

Those twins on the bench are hilarious! Like Statler and Waldorf in The Muppet Show. 

de Lind van Wijngaarden: You can’t tell their voices from each other – they sound exactly the same. Our target audience is officially from 9 to 12 years old, but there are so many differences between them. Some are already having sex on their minds, while others are still just “horse girls”, not thinking at all about boys.

Did you find your characters liberal or rather conservative?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: These kids are prudish and cautious. Although they see and hear a lot, the threshold is still high when they themselves have to take action. Like Jae, who had been in a relationship with a boy she had never seen. She didn’t want to meet him either, fearing that from then on everything would be different. You wonder what exactly such a digital relationship means to her, but it is something very true and romantic. You support each other from a distance at your convenience, and you can always show your best side.

What has changed, though, is the gender orientation in relationships. The first question you ask each other nowadays is “are you straight or are you gay?”

de Lind van Wijngaarden: It has become very normal to check that first. There are so many options these days, which can be quite confusing for young people growing up. That openness was a very normal thing among these girls. What is also striking: if homosexuality used to be mentioned in the past, it was exclusively about that. Now people are also allowed to be special in other ways, or excel in something, and then they happen to be gay as well. Many young people have considered or discussed other options too. For instance, Malak’s first kiss was with a girl.

‘I don’t like my body,’ you do hear often.

de Lind van Wijngaarden: That’s timeless, but social media has boosted it enormously. It is peculiar to puberty, when so much happens to your body and suddenly your looks also become important. It’s also the first time you feel being looked at. The same happened to me; I was a skinny girl with very big feet. When I look back at photos from those days, I think: girl, how pretty you looked! But back then… 

A campsite visually seems like a rather chaotic environment. And the sunlight is continuously bright.

de Lind van Wijngaarden: Indeed. Our DoP Jeroen Kiers was hugely concerned with the quality of the footage. Apart from the documentary scenes, which were in-the-moment, we also did interviews in a more stylised setting. For instance, we filmed Malak on a raspberry-red air mattress at sunset. Those were beauty shots. Now and then we steered things a bit. In Jae’s tent, there were a lot of kids and motion, so more directing was needed: “we are now going to film the scene in which your mother braids your hair and then you can talk about things.” To avoid things becoming a total mess, we gave reality a hand sometimes.

But not when they kiss! I was wondering, did you really want to be there at that moment?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: That kiss was totally unplanned. When she went to see that boy one evening, we kept the camera rolling for a long time, while darkness fell. In the background, Michael Jackson was sounding all the time; that was going to cause copyright problems – fortunately, we managed to filter out the music. The cameraman and sound guy stood quite close by, and I stood a bit further away, translating the conversation via my earphones, as Jeroen didn’t speak French. Through my mobile phone, I could follow what was going on at the monitor – that’s how it goes these days. I found it very uncomfortable… and then suddenly I heard these smacking noises in my ear. Our batteries were just about dead, these were the last seconds we could film, and then it happened finally! After that, we further left them alone.

Were you happy for her?

de Lind van Wijngaarden: I was! She went to the Ardèche with him afterwards, so they could spend some romantic moments without us. But it was an unusual situation. Do you think we went too far?

Anyway! But it would also have been very unfortunate if we never knew how it had ended.

Gert Hermans

“Doing a backflip is all about avoiding falling”

12-year-old Ian, his brother Marcus and their friend Promise are growing up in the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. They share the same playground and the same dream: to become acrobats, for which they exercise outdoors, in the open squares between the city’s blocks of houses. And they dream of travelling around the world, following in the footsteps of their older local heroes, who train them in performing their tricks and teach them a notion of both safety and showmanship. 

But besides accomplished acrobats, the boys have since become film stars, thanks to the documentary feature JUMP OUT. Director Nika Saravanja, together with the kids’ coach and mentor Stephen Otieno Owino, travelled to Brussels to present the film at the Filem’On festival.

Can you give me the bigger picture of where exactly we are?

Stephen Otieno Owino: In Nairobi, Kenya, a city very much divided by social class, with the super rich living in neighbourhoods that look like Beverly Hills, higher middle class living according to European standards, and the lower class living in suburbs. The differences between them are extreme. For every rich community, there is a slum where the workers live. Nairobi has a big international community, through the many NGOs based in Kenya, often operating in neighbouring countries like Ethiopia and Sudan. Nairobi is densely populated, without any facilities for the poor neighbourhoods. So kids go into the fields to play football, basketball or do acrobatics. 

That’s the cradle of your acrobatic career?

Otieno Owino: That’s our background. Every year we put together a show with our acrobatic team training in the slums, and then we’re invited by European festivals to come and perform. With the money we take home from Europe, we set up training programmes for kids. By teaching them how to perform properly, we prevent them from breaking arms and legs. 

Which could easily happen! Those performances look pretty risky!

Otieno Owino: Physical danger is essential for acrobatics. Now that I’m a parent, I see the danger. But as a child, we watched movies on VHS that we tried to imitate on the streets, and then we fell and broke an arm and the next day we tried again – that was a part of growing up. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle, you need to fall and get up again. Based on our own experience, we now teach kids about the do’s and don’ts. As an acrobat, I tell them we do acrobatics to avoid the risks; doing a backflip is all about avoiding falling. But we’re not always around, and accidents seem to be unavoidable – they’re a part of life.  

We pick up a sense of that already in the opening scene.

Nika Saravanja: I wanted to start in the middle of the action with this uplifting energy that I always feel when watching their performances. It took a lot of time for the DoP Mark Modric and me to develop trust with the kids, which we did through games and playing with them. Basically we were there every day for months, just letting them show us their world, without us judging them. They were of course interested in the film equipment and wanted to touch everything, so we organised film workshops where they got simple film equipment and the knowledge of the film process.

Otieno Owino: Mark and Nika sometimes joined the exercises. These were no foreigners interfering with our business, these were acrobats; they were one of us. Such details made it much easier to mingle.

You have been in the circus too? 

Saravanja: No,I used to be an acrobat, but I was more into acro-yoga, and artistic acro-balance performances. We met this group of Kenyan acrobats in the Zagreb Street Festival; we thought these guys were crazy! That summer, we trained together in Croatia, became really good friends and basically extended family.

Otieno Owino: After we met in 2010, we often talked about the possibility of making a documentary together. On the spot in Kenya, we decided that the film should be about the kids in the programme. I contributed as co-director and helped with permits and logistics.

Saravanja: We simply couldn’t have made anything without him.

It’s like these kids are playing all the time, and then playing turns into training, and then training turns into some kind of career plan. 

Otieno Owino: When opportunity knocks, it can become a career, but it still feels like a hobby, a part of community life, partly determined by your background. I’ve seen kids that really wanted to become acrobats, but their parents said no.

What did your parents say?

Otieno Owino: My father wanted me to become a doctor, but now he is amazed by what I achieved.

Saravanja: When I came to Nairobi for the first time, I met 10-year-old kids that are nowadays acrobats performing with Steve in Europe. Or they left for a circus in China. And when they return, they train the little ones. It inspires children to see that it is possible to make it your profession. For some of them this is truly an ambition, others train their entire childhood and then stop to go to university and become an engineer.

In the images we get to see from your European performances, what surprised me were the costumes. You perform a stereotypical African archetype, wearing leopard skirts…

Otieno Owino: It’s not stereotyping; it’s a part of our widely spread cultural tradition. If you perform ballet, you wear a tutu. It’s not because clock shoes are a part of the Dutch international representation that people can’t wear them any longer. 

Ian introduces his big brother Marcus by saying that “we used to be close but now he doesn’t want to be with me anymore.” Then the rest of the story, you see them together…

Saravanja: This introduction was shot at the end of the filming process, when Marcus had already grown into a teenager. At first we focused on Marcus, while Ian was a shy kid in the background. Then Marcus suddenly grew a moustache and got two meters tall.

Otieno Owino: During training, I noticed how he tried to act more cool, especially with girls being around. That was a big transition. He used to be all the time with Ian and Promise, but then there are all those scenes in which Ian and Promise are alone, because Marcus is somewhere else, probably chasing girls. 

Although they were very good together, taking care of each other. 

Saravanja: Kids taking care of each other, that’s really a thing in Kenya. You can leave your two-year-old with a bunch of kids and you know they’ll take care of it.

Otieno Owino: It’s a community thing. When I grew up and my mother went to work, we could eat anywhere, together with others. For us, children, that was totally normal. It’s still like that in poor communities. Like Mary, one of the ladies that you see in the film… Her house is the first one at the gate of the community and it’s a gathering place. It’s like a train station. If you open the door, there are 20 kids sitting and watching television and you wouldn’t be able to tell which children are hers or not. When you ask her if she isn’t getting tired of this, Mary is like: no, I love people, I love kids! 

Ian and Marcus were living with their grandma?

Saravanja: Their mom was all the time at work in South Sudan while they grew up with grandma. Mum left when Ian was only six months old. When finally she returned, Ian was like… who is this woman? It took him some time to get adjusted to staying with his mum; his grandmother had been his role model and the only mother he knew until that point.

How did you deal with the situation of grandma’s death?

Saravanja: We tried to convince her to go to the hospital, but she was in this super religious church and didn’t want to have anything to do with Western medicine. In the end, we did take her to the hospital. One mother later, after we left Kenya, she passed away.

At the end of the film, we get a vague notion of how the kids’ dream is fulfilled.

Saravanja: I leave it to the audience’s imagination what exactly happened in Europe. Actually, the boys were mainly in awe about everyday things: flushing a toilet, light switches… cute, but not a real storyline. We save these European snippets, filmed with their own small cameras, for the end credits, so you can see how much fun they had. We would like to bring them to Europe again but the bureaucratic procedure is simply a nightmare. We’re in an exchange programme with European circus schools, but the process has always been difficult, and nowadays it’s getting even more complicated.

How did the kids react to the film?

Saravanja: Together with their families, they were the first to see the film, and it was very emotional for all of us. They also had a chance to see it on the big screen in the Under Our Skin Human Rights film festival in Nairobi, where they were the main stars in a full cinema; they came on stage and gave a great Q&A.

Gert Hermans

“It was not the horses keeping me awake at night”

Robin and her friends, “The Hoods”, are always fighting with their rival gang for the piece of woodland at the end of the street. In the imagination of 11-year-old Robin, the wooden sheds there are transformed into a medieval village, where the children fight epic battles on horses, armed with swords and bows, instead of on bicycles and with sticks. Until a shady property developer shows up, who wants to raze the forest to the ground and instead promises the residents a stylish building complex.

When we There seems to be no brakes on British director Phil Hawkins. Not on his ability to elaborate on the thin line between fantasy and reality in his film, not on his ambition to go big with whirlwind adventures for young audiences (for which he could convince star actors from Harry Potter and GAME OF THRONES) and not on the enthusiasm with which he built tree houses on set.

How to pitch a project like this? People must have thought: what is this thing?

Phil Hawkins: The screenwriters did a great job of setting up the whole idea of reality and fantasy but the execution of how those would happen, wasn’t specific on page. The writers and I all had the same ambition to make it as big as possible but maybe they cleverly kept the scale a little reserved not to scare producers off. I thought it was the best script I ever read so my pitch to them was all about how to do reality and fantasy, how to make seamless transitions, and how to fully commit to that world of imagination. The producers didn’t quite know what to expect. Was it going to be a fancy dress spectacle or a low-budget Monty Python rip-off? Nobody wanted that. Until the moment we started shooting, they didn’t realise how big and epic it was going to look. 

You say ‘fully commit’ yet you consistently decide to always break the illusion. Even in the most epic, heroic historic scene, there’s a kid with a cell phone.

Hawkins: Because that’s the game. It is important to take ourselves seriously to a point and then remind the audience what it is that we’re actually doing… It’s kids playing! It was a fine balance we needed to make, and that balance constantly evolves throughout the film. Every single transition is different, and every time it happens for specific reasons – whether comical or dramatic. The director’s voice – or whatever pretentious expression you want to use – is in knowing when to switch between fantasy and reality, and why, so the audience doesn’t get lost.

You make it look epic, with knights in full armour, but at the same time there’s always a bit of cardboard box involved as well. Would it have been the same film if you’d had twice the budget?

Hawkins: The basic principle would have been the same, but It would have been bigger, there would have been more kids and more armour, and probably I would have done more with the battle sequences. This film is about imagination, and that comes without limits. It was about trying to do a lot for a little. We had to shoot fast, and make it feel big.

It takes a while – about 10 minutes – until the first grown-up enters the scene. Some of the adults are willing to support the kids in their dispute. Others are willing to support them in their imagination.

Hawkins: For Aura – the witch character – I guess imagination is all she has, and maybe – as the film suggests – there’s some medicinal things involved that make her more open to imagination / hallucination. Even though she actually comes across as a recluse, what she wants the most is to reconnect with her family. She is an old hippie, that’s her vibe, but we beefed up that character in the script, and gave her more of an arc and a backstory. 

Regarding the parents, it’s about them being there when they’re needed.

Hawkins: Every kid wants to know that their parents have their back. I hope ROBIN AND THE HOODS is not just for kids – it can work for parents too. I see them smiling during a screening, reconnecting with their childhood. I love the fact that inside us all, no matter how, we can access our childhoods again, and this makes us better people. Only people working with children’s films might understand how difficult it is to speak to a multi-generational audience.

Robin says we should give away the crown in order to save it! I’m not sure if those words have ever been used in a historical context.

Hawkins: That says something about her growth. The crown is what symbolises her childhood. What she’s essentially saying is that, I can give away this crown now because I don’t need it any longer. What’s more important is my imagination, and the ability for everyone to play. The selfish Robin is gone.

Have you heard about a film called BLOCK 5?

Hawkins: It’s fascinating! I watched it with pleasure. It was basically the same story but with different characters and a different approach. It’s often said that it would be interesting to give the same film to five different directors and they’d all be very different. Now I’ve had this experience with our film.

But the way you both worked with excavators is very similar. You make them monsters, dragons…

Hawkins: That’s one of the things I wish we had a bit more time for – to play up the dragons and the fighting. We rigged those dragons’ arms to lift up and breathe fire, but we never had the time to really do that.

Where is your story set? 

Hawkins: Let’s call it ‘regional generic’… The place should represent a lot of England and a lot of ‘outside of England’. It could be everywhere, so every kid can recognise it. 

You know that I totally believed this set was in one location, in one small forest? It felt like one unity, one cinematographic landscape.

Hawkins: Thanks for telling me – my obsession for a detailed set geography drives people crazy sometimes. One of my favourite moments in the film is when you finally see the kingdom for what it actually is – not as impressive as the bridges and the battlefield in Robin’s imagination. We discussed if we should get the camera up into the air, revealing that the woods were just this scrubby bush, but I didn’t want to hurt what the audience was bringing to it.

That set must have looked quite amusement park-ish?

Hawkins: The kids and crew, they loved that set. It was all real, on location in a forest, and it is still there. The farmer that allowed us on his land kept it – it will probably soon appear in a 1000 commercials. If you think that I’m a big kid, you should have seen our production designer Sivo Gluck… We were like two kids playing in the woods, with bigger toys and a bigger budget, trying to build the tree houses we would have loved as kids. The way we made use of recyclable and organic forest materials, makes it feel like it’s been there forever – it’s kind of lost in time. I love how it engages with people’s memories. If you ask how many grown-ups ever rode their bicycle imagining it was a horse, everyone would say yes. We all did. This film awakens all of this.

How did you work with the mass scenes, directing 50 kids into a battle?

Hawkins: For me that was the most fun. I obviously had talented stunt people and a team offering me the right tools. I didn’t find it stressful, except that there’s always time pressure involved. And my personal pressure about ‘how to make this look like BRAVEHEART without a BRAVEHEART budget?’ We couldn’t stick seven cameras on it like Ridley Scott would do and then cut all the best footage together. Every shot had to be planned. So when we were doing the one-shot-reality-fantasy-switch-battle, there was no extra footage filmed. If that didn’t work, I would have had a hole in the movie. I’ve been using those extras and backgrounds to the maximum extent, so if we had a 360 shot,  I’d be reusing the same kids but moving them to different positions so it looked like we had a lot more than we did!

That’s the technical part. Meanwhile you had 50 kids to work with. 

Hawkins: A director who complains about working with kids and animals, is a director striving for ultimate control. While you should accept the chaos of working with kids and use it to your advantage. You wouldn’t micromanage the performance of an Oscar-winning actor, would you? Then why would you do that with a kid? I always cast kids that can help me make the movie, kids that have agency. And I don’t patronise young actors, I talk to them the same way as with adults. That for me is the key to working with children. Whether there’s one or 50, we’re all on the same team.

You make it sound easy.

Hawkins: People assume that the scenes with horses and battles were the hardest to direct. For me, the most difficult were the domestic scenes because I knew how to ‘do big’, but I needed to make sure that the family life also felt cinematic and big, even if set in a small bedroom. That’s what kept me up at night, not the horses. 

Another thing you needed to make it work was an epic soundtrack. Sometimes very epic! 

Hawkins: I’m genuinely blown away by that score. James Everingham works for Hans Zimmer’s company Bleeding Fingers. So Big is in his DNA. And I am a follower of the Steven Spielberg and John Williams tradition, with a lyrical approach towards film scores – I want them to sound as big as possible. We didn’t have the budget for an orchestra, but what he did was mind-blowing. There’s a lot of clever tricks with motifs involved, to make reality and fantasy sound different but yet they become one at times. 

Imagine you had the freedom to fill a cinema with 300 people. Who would be in the audience? 

Hawkins: Anyone that could get me Star Wars? What would give me the most joy is for kids to go in with a belief that their voice doesn’t matter and to come out inspired that they can make a difference. The fact that I’ve watched it with different audiences in different countries across different languages and it worked… has been a real joy. I won the Junior Jury Award in Schlingel – if I would have had to choose one award, it would have been that one, voted by the exact audience that the film is made for. It’s an instant validation for me, targeting kids that are 30 years younger than me.

Gert Hermans

Gregory Zalcman, de Belgische producent van FLOW

“Een wereld zonder mensen, maar we weten niet waar ze heen zijn”

Een Oscar voor FLOW is in november 2024 nog een verre, vage droom. Gregory Zalcman van het Brusselse productiehuis Take Five maakt er al grapjes over wanneer hij op Filem’On de film komt voorstellen, waaraan zijn team heeft meegewerkt. Maar even later begint FLOW aan zijn triomftocht langs de bioscopen en zowat overal ter wereld groeit het verhaal van de kleine kat uit tot de ‘animatie sensatie’ van het jaar. 

Een wereld die door de mensen verlaten lijkt, wordt door een enorme vloedgolf overspoeld. Een kleine zwarte kat vlucht aan boord van een bootje, waar hij weldra gezelschap krijgt: ook een hond, een capybara, een grote vogel en een meerkat komen aan boord. Vijf verschoppelingen beginnen aan hun tocht over de eindeloze watervlakte, langs fascinerende verdronken landschappen. Onderweg moeten ze samenwerken om te overleven…

Gregory Zalcman: Dream Well Studio uit Letland is de hoofdproducent, met Sacrebleu Productions (Frankrijk) en Take Five (België) als co-producenten. Nadat we samen met Sacrebleu SIROCCO EN HET KONINKRIJK VAN DE WIND hadden gedaan, vroegen ze ons mee aan boord. Ik bekeek Gints Zilbalodis’ debuutfilm AWAY, las het projectdossier en was meteen overtuigd. Dit was zo innoverend en bijzonder! En het klikte tussen de producenten; we zaten op dezelfde lijn. We hadden een budget van €3,5 miljoen. De kosten in Letland liggen vrij laag, maar voor een animatiefilm van deze omvang blijft dit sowieso een mirakel.

Wat trok je zo aan bij die eerste kennismaking?

Zalcman: De beelden zijn altijd mijn eerste criterium. Ik bekeek de animatic en daar zat alles al in: het hele verhaal werd uitgerold en zelfs zonder geluid kon ik me een perfect beeld vormen van de wereld waarin het zich afspeelde.

Een heel bizarre wereld. Waar zijn wij beland? 

Zalcman: Overal en nergens. Je denkt wel dingen te herkennen – een Cambodjaanse tempel, een berglandschap in China… – maar er is geen concrete locatie. Iedereen kan voor zichzelf die wereld invullen. De mix van Oosterse en Westerse cultuurelementen maakt het universeel en tijdloos.

Maar ook ietwat onheilspellend, niet?

Zalcman: De dreiging van het water is voelbaar en maakt de dieren angstig. Maar na een poosje wordt het water rustig en neemt de natuur haar plaats weer in. Water heeft het leven voortgebracht. Het is paradoxaal om te zeggen dat de natuur een bedreiging is, want alles wat leeft, maakt deel uit van de natuur. Het is de mens die de grootste bedreiging vormt.

Vertelt FLOW een ecologisch verhaal? 

Zalcman: Je kan FLOW een ecologische fabel noemen, die kinderen vermoedelijk op een gevoelsmatig niveau zullen begrijpen. Dit is een wereld zonder mensen, maar we weten niet waar ze heen zijn. Zijn er nog mensen? Zijn ze gevlucht naar een andere plek? Heeft hun wanbeleid deze zondvloed veroorzaakt? Zijn ze gestorven in een pandemie? De film spoort je aan om je verbeelding te gebruiken, want kant-en-klare antwoorden krijg je niet. 

Hoe werd het werk onder de partners verdeeld?

Zalcman: Met Take Five verzorgden wij de volledige bruitage en mixage. De Franse sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas lijstte op wat hij nodig had en dat werd vanuit de bruitage studio aangeleverd. De mixing was ontzettend belangrijk. Omdat FLOW geen dialogen bevat, was de intensiteit van het geluid heel bepalend.

En de animatie?

Zalcman: Het project werd ontwikkeld in Letland en de animatie gebeurde gedeeltelijk in Frankrijk en België. Léo Silly Pélissier was de Franse hoofdanimator en Pierre Mousquet was onze Belgische supervisor, die een team van zes animatoren aanstuurde en hun werk corrigeerde. Tenslotte moest regisseur Gints Zilbalodis zijn goedkeuring geven. Het was een eenvoudige workflow. Met Take Five leverden we ongeveer 20% van de animatie – dat is dus zo’n 15 minuten.

Hoe verliep die samenwerking met Gints Zilbalodis?

Zalcman: In zijn vorige projecten werkte Gints doorgaans helemaal alleen – zo is hij het gewend. FLOW was de eerste film waarvoor hij moest leren om het project te delen met een hele crew, maar zijn samenwerking met de producenten en animatoren verliep enorm prettig. Hij was heel empathisch en luisterde oprecht naar de feedback van het team; mensen waren bereid om extra hun best te doen voor hem. Hij vroeg veel van ons, maar luisterde ook oprecht naar het team. Bovendien hadden we aldoor veel geluk met de productie. Ik kon het moeilijk geloven – mijn ervaring is: vroeg of laat loopt er altijd iets mis, dus er hangt ons nog een enorme ramp boven het hoofd. Niet dus! We bleven binnen het budget en binnen de timing. Dat bewijst dat je voor een film niet altijd hoeft te lijden. Onze medewerkers voelden zich goed en veilig en in deze sfeer konden ze gewoon hun werk doen en genieten.

Jullie werkten voornamelijk aan de personages en hun bewegingen. Nog nooit zag ik een getekende kat op zo’n waarheidsgetrouwe manier bewegen!

Zalcman: Het moest er volledig ‘naturalistisch’ uitzien. De dieren gaan nooit praten of bewegen als mensen. Dat soort antropomorfismen hebben we vermeden. Sommige van onze animatoren waren goed in het tekenen van katten, anderen hadden meer voeling met de capibara of de vogels… Iedereen kon zijn eigen sterktes uitspelen. We gingen een dag in de dierentuin capibara’s observeren en je vindt eindeloos veel kattenvideo’s online. De head of animation had een kort handboek samengesteld met richtlijnen, bv. de ogen van de kat bewegen op die manier, de staart moet altijd zo gebruikt worden,… Als het gaat om animeren, geldt de regel: hoe meer poten, hoe moeilijker de animatie.

Op een bepaald moment krijgen de dieren toch menselijke trekjes: ze besturen een boot, ze laden een picknickmand in,…

Zalcman: Die vrijheid hadden we nodig om ons verhaal te vertellen. Maar zelfs in die situaties blijven de dieren op een naturalistische manier bewegen.

Wat bedoel je met die term ‘naturalistisch’?

Zalcman: FLOW is geen realistische film – sommige situaties in de film kunnen zich in de werkelijkheid niet voordoen – maar de dieren bewegen wel op een natuurlijke manier. We streefden niet naar een fotorealistisch design dat de dieren exact weergeeft, zoals in de werkelijkheid. Dat was een budgettaire, maar ook een artistieke keuze. Gints beweert: hoe meer realistisch de designs, hoe sneller het beeld veroudert. Dat merk je zelfs aan Pixar of Disney films van 10 jaar geleden. Bij ons zijn het water en de decors heel realistisch, maar onze personages lijken wel met de hand geschilderd. Hoe minder we ons verliezen in details, hoe makkelijker we op een directe manier voeling krijgen met hun emoties. We gaan regelrecht naar het hart van de personages. 

Wat mij uitdagend leek, is dat dieren van een staat van totale rust meteen overgaan naar een staat van 100% hyperactiviteit en hyperalertheid. 

Zalcman: Dat bepaalt mee het tempo van de film. Geanimeerde blockbusters in de bioscoop willen kinderen overdonderen met entertainment. Een permanent hoog tempo vol explosieve actie en continue dialogen, verdooft het publiek. Bij ons wordt het ritme regelmatig vertraagd tot een bijna contemplatieve sfeer, maar nooit eentonig, want we willen de aandacht van het publiek niet verliezen.

Zonder dialoog wordt het ritme ook bepaald door de camerabewegingen.

Zalcman: Die camerabewegingen vind ik de grootste kracht van Gints. Zoiets zag ik nog maar zelden in een animatiefilm. De camera op ooghoogte van de dieren heeft een heel immersief effect – je wordt meegesleurd in de actie – maar dan schakelt hij plots over op een breed shot dat ruimte geeft om te ademen. Dat alterneren van standpunten is bij hem pure acrobatie. En tot op het laatste moment bleef hij de colour grading perfectioneren om het contrast tussen de donkere en lichte kanten van het verhaal te versterken.

Animatoren hebben doorgaans een hekel aan water, of op z’n minst aan het animeren van water. 

Zalcman: Wij zijn trots op het resultaat, dat niet moet onderdoen voor een topfilm met een budget van $80 miljoen. Onze kwaliteit is vergelijkbaar. Het animeren van water is een technische zaak, met mathematische berekeningen. Maar aangepaste plug-ins zijn tegenwoordig breed toegankelijk en dankzij AI, real-time rendering en gaming technologie zal dat in de toekomst nog verder evolueren. Maar techniek is niet alles; je hebt ook de juiste mensen nodig.

Ook in het geluid werd geïnvesteerd, of meer nog… in de afwezigheid ervan.

Zalcman: In de mixage wordt beslist wat we verhogen of verminderen. In ons geval was het vaak: verminderen. Het oor heeft nood aan variatie, en we waren niet bang van de stilte. Tot op de laatste dag bleven we in de mixage bepaalde elementen verminderen. Want door minder te geven, gaat het publiek vaak zelf meer voelen.

Kan je raden welke scène het publiek het meeste angst aanjaagt in de vertoningen die ik tot  nu toe meemaakte?

Zalcman: De scène waarin de vogels de vleugel van hun soortgenoot breken? Die kwam vaak ter sprake in discussies over de geschikte leeftijd van het doelpubliek. Maar de scène zit niet zomaar in de film om te shockeren; ze maakt volwaardig deel uit van het verhaal. De centrale vraag in de film is: wat is mijn plaats als individu ten opzichte van de groep, de maatschappij? Iedereen wil tot op zekere hoogte bij een groep horen en daarvoor moet je soms moeite doen of bepaalde standpunten opgeven. De vogel wordt uit de groep verstoten, maar de kat – die van nature een onafhankelijk dier is – begrijpt dat hij moet ingaan tegen zijn natuur en samenwerken met anderen om te overleven. 

Kan je iets vertellen over het profiel van Take Five?

Zalcman: Het bedrijf bestaat zo’n 15 jaar. Aanvankelijk waren we vooral bezig met kortfilms en documentaires. Toen stelde regisseur Sacha Feiner voor om zijn project LAST DOOR SOUTH in animatie te doen. Animatie is gewoon een andere techniek om een verhaal te vertellen. Of het de meest geschikte techniek is, dat is vaak een kwestie van gevoel. Die eerste animatiefilm werd een succes, en nadien volgden er steeds nieuwe projecten. We hebben films geproduceerd van Bruno Tondeur en Hannah Letaïf, van Anca Damian en Benoit Chieux. Onze lange animatiefilm SIROCCO EN HET KONINKRIJK VAN DE WIND was een mooie ervaring, en met FLOW spelen we opeens een niveau hoger; er komen steeds grotere projecten aankloppen. Wacht maar tot FLOW de Oscar wint!

Gert Hermans

“De buurt heeft hen gevormd tot wie ze zijn”

RUPTURE is niet alleen de naam van een documentaire, maar ook van een impactvol project in de Peterboswijk, een van minder zichtbare buurten van Brussel. Al meer dan 30 jaar neemt  jeugdhuis D’Broej jongeren uit de wijk mee op een zware trektocht door de Pyreneeën. De vermoeidheid en het overweldigende berglandschap dwingen hen om na te denken over hun leven. Zelfs als er een camera op hen gericht staat, zoals dat het geval was toen documentairemakers Younes Haidar en Zohra Benhammou hen vergezelden

 op hun tocht.

Younes Haidar: Rupture is een breekpunt, een overgangsritueel, zoals je ze vindt in alle culturen, van op de savanne tot in de jungle, en in veel jeugdbewegingen. Zo’n zware trektocht door de Pyreneeën helpt jongeren om op te groeien. ’s Avonds na de tocht bespreken ze samen waar ze vandaan komen, waar ze nu staan, en waar ze met hun leven naartoe willen.  

Waar ligt de Peterboswijk precies?

Haidar: In Anderlecht werden in de jaren 50 en 60 zogenaamde ‘wijken van de toekomst’ gebouwd, naar het model van de Parijse banlieus: een groene omgeving met winkels en kinderopvang op wandelafstand, zodat mensen de wijk nauwelijks moesten verlaten. Wat begon als de stad van de toekomst eindigde als een geïsoleerde wijk, die jaren aan haar lot werd overgelaten.

Voelen de bewoners zich Brusselaars?

Zohra Benhammou: Zeker, maar vooral ook ‘Peterbossenaar’. De buurt heeft hen gevormd tot wie ze zijn. Khalid zegt: “Ik woon daar, ik werk er, ik heb er mijn vrouw ontmoet…” Ondanks de problemen, zijn ze allemaal trots op hun wijk. Je kan de drugsproblematiek en criminaliteit niet negeren, maar toch ervaren zij het vooral als een veilige plek.

Haidar: Toen we voor de avant-première overwogen om naar Flagey te trekken, bleek dat voor velen een brug te ver. Uiteindelijk belandden we in Zinnema, en de zaal zat stampvol.

Zijn deze mondige jongeren in jullie film niet ‘de happy few’ uit de wijk?

Haidar: De jongeren komen niet allemaal uit een veilige omgeving, maar de problemen waar ze mee worstelen, zijn universeel en niet strikt verbonden met de Peterboswijk: ze hebben voeling verloren met het onderwijs, met hun familie, enz. D’Broej koos voor deze groep omdat ze hadden ingeschat dat onze aanwezigheid niet tot een vertrouwensbreuk met de begeleiders zou leiden. Elke groep heeft een ander profiel. De begeleiders van D’Broey staan in contact met justitie en bieden soms zo’n tocht aan als laatste kans om jongeren weer op het rechte pad te krijgen. Maar in zo’n groep zou onze aanwezigheid het doel van de missie ondergraven. 

Benhammou: Bovendien willen we dat beeld uit de media nuanceren, die het enkel hebben over criminaliteit en drugsproblematiek in Peterbos. Wij vonden het belangrijk om te tonen dat er ook jongeren wonen zoals jij en ik.

Dwingt RUPTURE jullie in de rol van ambassadeurs van de Peterboswijk?

Haidar: Wij konden dit verhaal op talloze manieren vertellen, maar we kozen ervoor om de wijk enkel bij het vertrek te tonen, bij wijze van introductie. Het gaat over een rupture, een tijdelijke breuk met hun thuisbasis. Dus blijven we de rest van de film in de Pyreneeën en keren niet meer terug naar België.

Behalve via de gsm’s! Die zijn altijd aanwezig. 

Benhammou: Die gsm garandeert de connectie met hun familie. Hun thuisbasis is voor hen enorm belangrijk.

Haidar: In de bergen was er vaak geen bereik. De Pyreneeën zijn enorm geïsoleerd: geen dorpen, geen winkels,… Heel soms, als je op de juiste plek stond, had je plots een beetje bereik. Dat was het moment om collectief contact op te nemen met het thuisfront.

Hoe zorgden jullie ervoor dat we naar een documentaire met universele zeggingskracht kijken, en niet naar een kampvideo van het jeugdhuis?

Benhammou: We hebben zorgvuldig onze hoofdpersonages gekozen, die representatief waren voor de hele groep. Die keuze namen we mee in de montage via een massa post-its.

Haidar: We wisten pas twee weken op voorhand dat we mee op tocht konden. We kenden de verhalen van de individuele deelnemers niet; we hadden hen slechts een keer vluchtig ontmoet op een pizza-avond in het jeugdhuis. We waren slechts met z’n tweeën om te filmen, dus Zohra volgde een spoedcursus ‘geluid’, en ik legde mij toe op het filmen met een drone, waarvoor je een examen moest afleggen. Onze ambitie was: met een fly on the wall aanpak zoveel mogelijk footage verzamelen. De film zou pas vorm krijgen in de montage. En zo is het ook gebeurd.

Hoe ging dat in z’n werk?

Haidar: We merkten dat sommige thema’s steeds terugkeren: school, identiteit, familie, hun migratieachtergrond, het stigma van de wijk,… Daar probeerden we een betekenisvolle laag aan toe te voegen.

Benhammou: Na een poosje zaten we volledig vast met de montage – we focusten te hard op de thema’s. We vroegen er een externe monteur bij om enige chronologie toe te voegen. Je moet nu en dan de zon zien opkomen en ondergaan; anders loop je verloren in het verhaal. 

Een van de deelnemers zegt: ik ben hier omdat ik niks anders te doen had.

Benhammou: Dat is heel herkenbaar. Sommige Brusselse jongeren hangen gewoon graag, in hun wijk, in winkelcentra etc. Ze hebben niet altijd iets om handen. Meegaan naar de Pyreneeën wordt dan een evidente keuze.

Haidar: Jarenlang was Peterbos een achtergestelde wijk waar niemand in geïnteresseerd was; er was zelfs geen voetbalveldje om te spelen. Dat vergroot nog de aantrekkingskracht van het drugsmilieu: als je de hele tijd op een bankje rondhangt omdat je niets te doen hebt, dan is de €1000 die je kan verdienen met een relatief eenvoudige opdracht een grote verleiding.

Hoe gaan de deelnemende jongeren met elkaar om?

Benhammou: Enorm begripvol. Enkel door die steun kunnen ze de tocht tot een goed einde brengen. Ze plagen en dagen elkaar uit, maar zodra iemand het moeilijk heeft, staan de anderen er naast ter ondersteuning. Ze dragen elkaar! Je ziet hoe ze ‘s morgens boterhammen maken voor elkaar, en na het eten ruimen ze samen af. Het is een community waarin iedereen voor elkaar zorgt.

Het tonen van je kwetsbare kant is daarbij de eerste stap. Dat lukt beter als je moe en hongerig bent.

Benhammou: Elke avond was er een groepsmoment, waar ze soms moesten spreken voor de hele groep. Ook Younes en ik hebben dat gedaan – daardoor voelde iedereen zich veilig. Ook voor ons was het een heel emotionele week.

Haidar: Je hebt weinig slaap, je raakt vermoeid en super emotioneel. Vooral de gesprekken ‘s avonds waren intens. Soms zie je aan het beeld dat mijn armen trillen van vermoeidheid. Als de jongeren naar bed waren, moesten Zohra en ik nog het materiaal klaarmaken voor de volgende dag en de scènes bespreken – de film moest onderweg gemaakt worden. 

In het begin zie je een kloof tussen jongens en meisjes. Hoe evolueerde dat doorheen de tocht?

Benhammou: Aanvankelijk zoeken ze mensen op die ze kennen in de groep, maar stilaan vormen er zich nieuwe kliekjes, met jongens en meisjes door elkaar. Het wandeltempo bepaalt met wie je het meeste tijd doorbrengt. Zowel bij de jongens als de meisjes zijn er die aldoor ‘gas geven’, terwijl anderen liever achterop lopen om wat te grappen en grollen.

Het imago van het onderwijs krijgt een enorme deuk.

Haidar: De taak van leerkrachten is enorm zwaar en velen doen super hard hun best. Maar ik spreek uit eigen ervaring; mijn twee halfbroers zijn Marokkaans. Op hun katholieke witte scholen moeten ze voor alles veel harder vechten dan ik. Ik zie er iets ‘blanker’ uit en kon gewoon het varken uithangen op school, terwijl zij veel zwaarder aangepakt worden. Soms ga ik mee naar het oudercontact of ik overleg met de directeur, en ik word heel anders behandeld dan mijn stiefmoeder met haar hoofddoek. België heeft een uitstekend onderwijssysteem – wereldtop! – maar we zijn jammer genoeg ook wereldtop in ongelijke kansen. Kijk hoeveel mensen met een migratieachtergrond er in de beroepsafdeling zitten. Dat komt omdat er geen geloof is in eigen kunnen. “Ga maar achteraan in de klas zitten, zwijg en doe niet moeilijk.” Ik zie hoe onze – intussen voormalige – minister van onderwijs de zaken heel bestraffend aanpakt; de schuldigen zijn alweer de ouders, die strafpunten krijgen als ze thuis geen Nederlands spreken. Het is makkelijk om de schuld op de ouders af te schuiven – als er iemand de macht heeft om verandering op gang te brengen, is het toch de minister? Alle studies tonen aan: investeren in onderwijs is investeren in de toekomst. Als we de werkloosheid en criminaliteitscijfers omlaag willen krijgen, moeten we daar op inzetten.

Religie blijft opvallend afwezig in de film.

Benhammou: Dat was voor ons geen focuspunt. De jongeren benoemen het als ‘spiritualiteit’. Als ze haar ambities voor de toekomst verwoordt, zegt Nisrine dat ze “dichter bij haar spiritualiteit wil komen”. Die benadering hebben wij gerespecteerd.

Haidar: Ik zie religie als een hoogst persoonlijke, diepe spirituele band. Zo hebben we het ook getoond in de film. Als sommige jongeren bidden voor het slapengaan, is dat een moment van individuele beleving. Een van de begeleiders is een religieus persoon, maar met de groep praat Bakr over de maatschappij, hun toekomst, hun opleiding – hij predikt niet. Tenzij jongeren hem tijdens het wandelen daar individuele vragen over stellen. Het was trouwens uitzonderlijk dat het ditmaal een uitsluitend Marokkaanse groep was, met dus ook veel moslims. De bewoners van de Peterboswijk hebben een heel uiteenlopende achtergrond; er wonen net zo goed een heleboel katholieke mensen.

Wat hebben die bergen jullie gegeven als filmmakers? 

Haidar: Heel veel symboliek. We hebben op een week tijd alle seizoenen meegemaakt, en dat paste uitstekend bij ons verhaal. De eerste dag hing er een dikke mist, waarin de groep compleet verdwaalde, als een metafoor voor het zoekende in hun leven. Op een zonnige dag worden ze snel overmoedig, maar dan volgt de val… een sneeuwstorm! Maar uiteindelijk ging de zon toch weer schijnen. Dat zijn de ups en downs van het volwassen leven. Ze weten dat ze in hun leven nog veel bergen moeten beklimmen.

Benhammou: In de montage was het een evenwichtsoefening hoe we de dronebeelden zouden gebruiken. Het mocht geen National Geographic worden, maar we wilden wel de grootsheid van die plek tonen; mensen voelen zich heel klein, omringd door bergen. Volgens Khalid zijn die bergen een tribune waarop de jongeren plaatsnemen om naar hun eigen leven te kijken. De bergen maken ook meteen duidelijk: je kan hier niet onbezonnen de aap uithangen; het is een gevaarlijke plek waar je voorzichtig moet zijn en de regels respecteren.

De film legde inmiddels een eigen parcours af.

Benhammou: Dankzij Bruzz reisde de film langs alle Brusselse gemeenschapscentra, en in samenwerking met Studio Globo stelde D’Broej een lessenpakket voor scholen samen, waar ook Khalid en de andere begeleiders aan meewerkten. Er zijn ook altijd jongeren beschikbaar voor Q&A’s.

Haidar: Er werd een traject uitgestippeld waardoor de jongeren bij elke vertoning aanwezig konden zijn. Voor de première op Docville kwamen er drie bussen vol vrienden en familie vanuit Peterbos. De film draaide ook op een documentairefestival in Marokko en dankzij Darna vzw reisden veel van de jongeren mee naar het land van hun ouders. RUPTURE werd er zelfs vertoond in een jeugd- en een vrouwengevangenis. De hoofdpersonages gaven zich helemaal bloot voor de camera, maar ze hebben er veel voor in ruil gekregen. 

En ze voeren hun eigen promotie!

Haidar: Niet enkel voor de film, maar ook voor het project Rupture. Sociale werkers uit andere steden werden door de film geïnspireerd en willen nu zelf een gelijkaardig traject ondernemen. Het format is voor Peterbos een soort van exportproduct geworden. Binnenkort zullen er dus nog meer jongeren van kunnen genieten.

Benhammou: Het initiatief voor de film kwam niet van ons – Peterbos stapte zelf naar Bruzz met het idee. In die periode kwam de Peterboswijk heel negatief in het nieuws, maar dankzij een positieve reportage groeide het vertrouwen in Bruzz. Daarom stelde Khalid voor om het project te filmen. Als freelancers voor Bruzz kwamen ze dan bij Younes en mij terecht. 

Bij een project als dit gaat de aandacht vaak naar het thema, en minder naar jullie cinematografische verdienste…

Haidar: Ik merk dat mensen heel nieuwsgierig zijn naar hoe het nu gaat met de jongeren – heel goed eigenlijk. En er wordt vaak gepeild naar de impact van dit project, wat heel moeilijk meetbaar is. Maar het leeft in de wijk. Kinderen spreken ons soms aan: “Khalid zegt dat ik – als ik groot genoeg ben – ook mee mag naar de Pyreneeën.” Dat is iets waar ze nu al naar uitkijken.

Gert Hermans

Na een spannende prijsuitreiking is de 18e editie van het Internationaal Filmfestival voor Jong Publiek, Filem’On tot een einde gekomen. We waren ontzettend blij om ons publiek eindelijk te kunnen verwelkomen in de Brusselse cinema’s! Het was een prachtige editie! We hebben er enorm van genoten en hopelijk jullie ook! Stiekem kijken we nu al uit naar de editie in 2024. Nog even geduld daarmee, maar dan wel nu de aankondiging van de laureaten van dit jaar!

Scroll naar beneden in het groene kader om de volledige nieuwsbrief te lezen.

Oproep: Filem’On Scriptlab

Scenario’s in ontwikkeling

Schrijf jij verhalen voor een jong publiek? Wil jij een wereld creëren die kinderen en jongeren doet dromen, verbazen, leren,… maar zit je vast in een writer’s block? Wanhoop niet, het Filem’On Scriptlab komt je redden!

Over het Filem’On Scriptlab

Dit jaar verloopt het Scriptlab enkel in het Frans. In 5 momenten tussen 22/10 en 5/11 ondersteunen we schrijvers en scenaristen bij de verdere ontwikkeling van hun scenario voor kinderen en jongeren (tussen de 2 en 16 jaar). Ervaren script-dokters helpen je met de ontwikkeling van narratief, personages, plot,… met persoonlijke feedback en diverse schrijftechnieken. Ook vinden er sessies plaats van onze partners rond de ontwikkeling van jouw project. 

Op het programma staan ook interacties met jongeren zelf en ontmoetingsmomenten waarin deelnemers inzicht krijgen in het actuele jongerenleven en kunnen netwerken met film-professionals. Het scriptlab vindt plaats tijdens het Filem’On filmfestival in Brussel, van 22 oktober tot en met 5 november 2025. 

Waarom meedoen?

We zoeken naar passende mogelijkheden voor een follow-up.

Algemene criteria

• Je bent bezig aan een script, gericht op kinderen en/of jongeren.
• Je bezorgt ons 1 uitgewerkte scène en een synopsis van max 1 A4.
• Je bent beschikbaar tijdens het festival (22 oktober – 5 november 2025). Selectie van deelnemers vindt plaats in de zomer. 
• We moedigen Actiris werkzoekenden en jonge scenaristen onder de 26 jaar aan.
• We moedigen iedereen aan om een scenario in te dienen, ongeacht afkomst, gender, handicap, leeftijd,… We besteden de nodige aandacht aan de toegankelijkheid. Als filmfestival voor Jong Publiek, willen we specifiek jongeren aanmoedigen hun scenario in te dienen. 

Klaar om eraan te beginnen? Bezorg ons voor 10 juni 2025 via dit formulier. Verdere informatie volgt! Nog vragen? Contacteer ons op filemon.zakelijk@gmail.com

Het Filem’On Scriptlab werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door mediarte en Amplo.

Na een spannende prijsuitreiking is de 17e editie van het Internationaal Filmfestival voor Jong Publiek, Filem’On tot een einde gekomen. We waren ontzettend blij om ons publiek eindelijk te kunnen verwelkomen in de Brusselse cinema’s! Het was een prachtige editie! We hebben er enorm van genoten en hopelijk jullie ook! Stiekem kijken we nu al uit naar de editie in 2024. Nog even geduld daarmee, maar dan wel nu de aankondiging van de laureaten van dit jaar!

Scroll naar beneden in het groene kader om de volledige nieuwsbrief te lezen.

De vakantie is nog niet voorbij dus Filem’on wil je even herinneren aan het super toffe stadsspel dat wij maakten! Gaan jullie de mysterieus in de Brusselse stad oplossen? Laat het ons weten! Je kunt hier het volledige spel met de kaart vinden!

“Improvising is not very economical”

How to do an interview about a 3.5 minute short film consisting only of transforming objects, seemingly without logic or structure? Simple… by finding someone who can tell fascinating things about a 3.5 minute short film consisting only of transforming objects. That is why we meet Alexander Isert during the Brussels Filem’on Festival with only one crucial question…

Is there a logic in what I saw, or is it all random?
Alexander Isert: The film is about change; nothing stays the same, everything evolves all the time. META stands for metamorphosis; characters and settings are changing into one another. There is a second version of this film with a Buddhist-inspired voice-over about the constant changing of things and how you don’t have to be afraid of it but accept it. Everything is connected and will finally go back into one. That is what holds this story together.

Basically it’s just objects transforming, 3,5 minutes long.
Isert: At times we improvised, we tried things out to see what happens. Improvising is not something you’ll often hear about in animation; it’s not very economical. Animation as we’ve learnt it is all about planning, but we made a film like this also for the joy of animation. The questions we asked ourselves in the process were very practical; about form, about lines, and about which object could morph into another.

How much of a Buddhist are you?
Isert: Director Antje Heyn has a soft spot for this philosophy, which is somehow integrated in the way we work.

What we see is the combination of animals, fantasy creatures, geometrical forms,… Everything can be animated…
Isert: … and everything can be integrated. The transformation I am most satisfied with is the one from a whale into a swimmer which happens quite organically.

There is also a technical side to the element of transformation. I heard you saying: everything is digital.
Isert: Morphing is a very drawn-animation-thing-to-do; it’s very appealing for animators. We translate pretty old school drawn animation into the digital realm, frame by frame, while applying all the classic rules of animation. This film could have been done on paper, but it would have been much more of an effort.

Even if it looks like not much more than an exercise, the ending has kind of an emotion to it.
Isert: If there is a narrative to it, it is that: you go through all these stages, some of them might seem a bit fearsome, but you just have to accept what is happening and in the end it all goes back to the origin. There is an emotional quality to it, as it ends full circle.

You were the animator, not the director. What’s the difference, in this case.
Isert: Protoplanet Studio consists of three people at its core, developing projects together as a team. Designer Johanna Hochholzer creates the characters and gives our films their particular look. Then there is me as an animator and Antje as director. The story development is shared between the three of us.

Endless variations are possible in morphing. Could you make 10 more films like this, or is this the ultimate morphing film you had in you?
Isert: For us and for now, this is our ultimate morphing film. It is very much about rhythm: setting certain accents on the right moment. For me animation is about knowing when what should happen and with which formal qualities. It is like making music, finding the right accents in your improvisations.

So what you’ve made is a jazz masterpiece!
Isert: Storyboarding is about reducing the efforts. But sometimes results look very much planned, repeating the same recipes, lacking a certain spontaneity. There is another approach to animating which maybe is explored too seldom, but we definitely strove for that and it was a good thing to do!

Gert Hermans

“Een brug tussen Afrikaanse en Europese kunst”

Een kind, een buffel en een schitterend masker vormen de ingrediënten van de wonderlijke animatiefilm KUUMBA UMBO. Tijdens het Filem’on Festival vertelde de Belgisch-Russische regisseur Ekaterina Ogorodnikova hoe deze elementen samen een verhaal vormen over een jongen die in Afrika opgroeit tot man.

KUUMBA UMBO betekent ‘De geboorte van de vorm’ in het Swahili en lijkt gesitueerd in een tijdloze wereld.
Ogorodnikova: De geboorte van de vorm is de geboorte van de wereld. Vanaf onze kindertijd tot het moment waarop we onze laatste adem uitblazen, leren we over de wereld rondom ons en proberen daarin onze plaats te vinden.

Via het verhaal van een Afrikaans masker vertelt KUUMBA UMBO over een kind dat opgroeit tot man.
Ogorodnikova: Het kind groeit op, samen met zijn vriend de buffel. We volgen hem tijdens zijn initiatierite als tiener. Hij wordt maker van maskers, de belangrijkste job in het dorp. In de openingsscène is hij in het woud op zoek naar het geschikte hout om een masker te maken dat de dorpelingen gebruiken tijdens ceremonies. De buffel uit zijn kindertijd inspireert hem voor de vorm.

In de laatste minuut verandert het verhaal van toon, wanneer dit masker opduikt in een westerse galerij of tentoonstelling.
Ogorodnikova: Toen ik aan de film begon, was het einde nog niet helemaal duidelijk. Tot ik op een dag een Afrikaans gezin in Brussel voor het raam van een kunstgalerij zag staan. Het regende en de vader, moeder en drie kinderen keken naar binnen, naar de Afrikaanse maskers en sculpturen. Ze waren ingetogen, de vader keek alsof hij in gebed was. Ik begreep: deze mensen kijken niet naar de prijs of de schoonheid van deze voorwerpen; ze zijn geïnteresseerd in iets groters, iets betekenisvol. Op dat moment kreeg het verhaal zijn definitieve vorm.

Wat is het verhaal achter dat masker?
Ogorodnikova: Het Goli Glin masker komt uit de Ivoorkust. Goli Glin, zoon van de god Nyama, is een mythische held van het Baule volk. Hij heeft elementen van een buffel en een antiloop. Het masker vormt een brug tussen de Afrikaanse en Europese kunst. Het inspireerde talrijke kubisten en fauvisten, zoals Pablo Picasso, die het gebruikte in zijn beroemde Guernica. Door het dragen van dit masker leggen de dorpelingen contact met een andere realiteit – in veel culturen transformeren mensen via de maskers die ze dragen tot andere wezens.  

Eigenlijk is het masker het hoofdpersonage van jouw film.
Ogorodnikova: De film is een ode aan het creatieproces van zulke maskers. Afrikaanse kunstenaars werken vanuit een beeld in hun gedachten. Het kan een vorm zijn uit hun herinnering, iets dat ze zagen als kind en dat door de volwassen kunstenaar wordt gematerialiseerd. Daarom toon ik de kunstenaar in al zijn levensfases. Afrikaanse beeldhouwers zijn enorm vaardige ambachtslui. Ze kennen de eigenschappen van elke houtsoort en kerven hun ideeën rechtstreeks in het materiaal, zonder voorbereidende schetsen. Ik ben zelf beeldhouwer en weet hoe moeilijk het is om een vorm te creëren rechtstreeks vanuit een beeld in je gedachten.

Hoe gaf je vorm aan dat Afrikaanse landschap?
Ogorodnikova: Ik ben nooit in Afrika geweest; ik heb dit landschap nooit met mijn eigen ogen gezien. Maar ik bekeek een heleboel boeken en documentaires over Afrikaanse kunst. Misschien heb ik dit landschap wel gedroomd…

Op sommige momenten worden objecten herleid tot pure geometrische vormen, bv. de speren die door de lucht vliegen tijdens de jacht.
Ogorodnikova: Ornamenten en motieven zijn enorm belangrijk in de Afrikaanse kunst. Geometrische vormen kunnen veel symbolische betekenissen hebben. Die vormen ritmeer ik op de muziek, wat extra dynamiek geeft aan het beeld.

De kleuren in jouw film zijn beperkt – bruin, grijs, beige – maar zo rijk aan tinten en schakeringen!
Ogorodnikova: Op een speciaal soort aquarelpapier schilderde ik talloze achtergronden; duizenden schetsen met enkel kleurenpatronen; geen computerkleuren maar het resultaat van eindeloos veel experimenten.

Jouw oorspronkelijke achtergrond ligt niet in de animatiefilm.
Ogorodnikova: Ik studeerde in St. Petersburg aan de Kunstacademie in de richting Monumentale en Schone Kunsten. Daar creëerde ik monumentale werken, zoals fresco’s en mozaïeken. Sinds twee jaar woon ik in België, in Gent, waar mijn man een bedrijf heeft.

Hoe kwam je dan bij deze animatiefilm terecht?
Ogorodnikova: Ik behaalde aan de Universiteit van St. Petersburg mijn diploma in Film & Televisie, Afdeling Animatie. Mijn debuutfilm LOVE PRAY FIGHT maakte ik voor een tentoonstelling van Indiase kunst in Brussel. In mijn animatiestudio werkte ik aan een heleboel films met mijn jongste zoon, o.a. THE DOG STORY die zo’n 15 prijzen won op jeugdfilmfestivals. Animatie gaf me een nieuwe taal om over verschillende werelden te praten. Voor een grote tentoonstelling van Afrikaanse kunst in het Hermitage Paleis in St. Petersburg contacteerde de curator mij met de vraag om een korte animatiefilm te maken. De Hermitage heeft een rijke collectie waaruit ik een object mocht kiezen. Ik vond dit Goli Glin masker een interessante keuze. Dit was mijn eerste grote animatieproject.

En zullen er nog meer volgen?
Ogorodnikova: Ik zou graag een serie films maken over de geboorte van de vorm in andere culturen. Ik heb al een verhaal en een animatieschets over de boeddhistische sculpturen van Avalokiteshvara klaar. Film is als een kind dat zich aan mij vastklampt. Als je een sculptuur hebt afgewerkt, ben je er ook mee klaar. Maar KUUMBA UMBO houdt me al heel lang bezig; ik reis in de voetsporen van die film.

Gert Hermans

“A beautiful noise all over Bangladesh”

In the most wonderful colours, Amitabh Reza Chowdhury’s RICKSHAW GIRL depicts all kinds of injustice in the villages and towns of Bangladesh. Naima, a young girl who wants to help her ailing father, encounters abuse of power, discrimination and social inequality while cycling the streets of Dhaka with her rickshaw. But with all those things going wrong on a structural level, one hopeful message of RICKSHAW GIRL is that with the right, honest people in the right position, many problems can be solved on an individual level.

What is this rickshaw culture all about?
Amitabh Reza Chowdhury: Cycle rickshaws were first introduced in Calcutta around 1930. European jute exporters imported them in Bangladesh for their personal use. The new vehicle roused great curiosity among the people of Dhaka, who were used to horse carriages, palanquins and city-canal boats. These rickshaws didn’t receive a very enthusiastic response, until rickshaw culture grew big in the eighties. Initially rickshaws were painted with cinema posters, not as a part of a marketing campaign; it simply could be any kind of poster that painters found interesting. When for religious reasons, the depiction of the human face on rickshaws was banned, they started painting animals. Do you remember Naima got involved in a quarrel with a guy and then painted him as a rat? This is a typical motive used for such decorations.

You frame them in a wonderful way.
Chowdhury: This is the art direction of the streets in Dhaka. It didn’t need framing, it was all there. Whatever you see in the streets in this film is natural; only for the interiors we did some art direction.

To pull a rickshaw, you need to be a man.
Chowdhury: In Bangladesh, there are no more than two or three female rickshaw pullers. It simply never happens. Women can do daily labour in brick factories or shipyards, but the rickshaw business still isn’t ready for it.

This is not as much a film about the unfair position of women in society as I thought it was?
Chowdhury: This is not a feminist film; this is a humanist film about any person, struggling to make a living in Dhaka city.

Still we hear a woman saying that ‘there is no pride in being a man’.
Chowdhury: I wrote this character named Marium into the film. After the death of her husband she is now running a rickshaw business as an empowered woman who knows that regardless of being a man or woman, you can achieve anything you want in this life.

Nevertheless I saw a big tragedy in the scene in which Naima turns herself into a boy. When she cuts her hair, that is falling on the floor, it’s like by losing her femininity, she loses her greatest good.
Chowdhury: She is passionate about rickshaw riding, and if that is the only job she will accept, becoming a boy is the price she pays. Even if that includes cutting off her hair. For a Bengali girl, long hair is the ultimate significance of beauty. Still she cuts it because she wants to earn a living by doing the thing that she enjoys most. Like me. I graduated in economics, I could make a living on economic development studies and many people wonder why I don’t do it, as life on a film set is hard. But I want this job, and I will do whatever is required for it. In the whole narrative structure of the film, that scene is one of the emotional climax points. 

What about the scene with the bird?
Chowdhury: In Bangladesh, there is a situation I strongly want to criticise. Girls and boys are coming to the city to work in housekeeping, but when being hired, their employers lock them inside the house. They turn them into prisoners. Like a bird locked in a cage. When Naima sees this bird outside and wants to help it, she can’t because she is caged. In the morning when the door opens, she runs out like a bird flying out of its cage.

Both in the city and in the village, there is a lot of shouting going on. Bangladesh seems to be a noisy country.
Chowdhury: Extremely noisy! With very different kinds of noises, like the honking, going on all day long. Most people initially come from a riverside area, from the delta. When you’re on one bank of the river, and you see a family on the other bank, you will go like “hey, how are you?!” When moving to the city, people still act the same. “Hey boy!!” That is the normal amount of decibels they produce. It creates a beautiful noise all over Bangladesh that I found very enjoyable; it is the purest beauty of Bangladesh. 

I thought there was often also a kind of aggression involved, based on power positions.
Chowdhury: Shouting is considered a power indeed. In the village this powerful guy – the second man of the city commissioner – holds a dominant position, which allows him to shout, beat others and use bad language. The disrespect from rich people towards the poor, or from the authorities towards citizens is highly prevalent in our society. I wanted this film to launch a dialogue with society and ask: “Do you see what is happening? If you don’t like what is going on, do something about it.”

By telling about the struggle of one girl, you open the spectrum for telling about the struggle of women in general and the struggle of the poor…
Chowdhury: In Dhaka, you have to fight for every basic right; there is nothing like the right to food or health or education. So everyone claims their own rights. Bengalese people are strugglers; we are fighters by default. We fought for 9 months to get our freedom in 1971, we fought against the British, against Pakistan… and still we are living the post-colonial era in a typical capitalist country where everyone fights for his own class. The middle class is very limited; 70% of the people belong to the poor class. Most slums and houses are illegal; people made them their home and now that they live there, they claim their rights. The film actually had two endings. I shot another ending with the police tearing down the entire slum. But after seeing the film, I felt it was lacking hope, it was too negative. So I reshot the scene and added the animation.

What about the animation in that closing scene?
Chowdhury: The rickshaw paintings are one of the film’s vibrant main characters that we could bring to life through movement. I asked the SICO animation team from Bangladesh to create the concept. Starting from a live action shot with Naima on a roof, we aimed for a smooth transition to animation. The roof that she stands on was painted, which took us 10 days. Then we created some very subtle movement when the moon starts rising; that is the first animated element. I didn’t want to go beyond reality, which is why only in the last part the full animation happens.

Naima’s paintings are so elegant and beautiful!
Chowdhury: All the rickshaw paintings were made by a young, underestimated artist named Sulehman. He makes these brilliant paintings as if they were in 3D. Our production designer explained to him the concept and the stages, and he painted them brilliantly. When Sulehman was working on the peacock, I told him this was a wide shot “so we don’t need the eyes in detail”. He looked at me and sighed “You don’t understand about art!” 

I’ve seldom seen a film in which colours had the same intensity.
Chowdhury: I wanted this film to look like rickshaw paintings, that are full of specific colours. The paintings always have balance and symmetry and often use the same motives. The peacock is a commonly used motif, because peacocks have the colour. 

Even the industrial scenes are of splendid beauty.
Chowdhury: They were shot at a sugar cane factory in Pabna. Because of the rhythm of sugar cultivation, the factory is operational for six months, and the next six months it is closed. That is when we did the shooting.

“For those who found their purpose, even the ugly is beautiful,” one says in the film.
Chowdhury: That is my personal belief. Bangladesh is going through troubled times, but if you would offer me citizenship in a well-developed country, why would I accept? In Bangladesh I have a purpose; I was born there, together with many other struggling people and I want to tell their story. How would you define ugliness? In his book ON UGLINESS Umberto Eco explains how ugliness is defined from a western cultural perspective. It is my understanding of reality that ugliness has a beauty in it, you just need to find it. Art is not to be found in museums. In North Bangladesh women paint the doors and walls of their houses in the most beautiful ways. I don’t consider art only to be manifested on an institutional basis. Art can come from real people with no background in art history. Art grows inside you and it will find a way to manifests itself, and people will notice you.

The magic of cinema is a recurring theme in films from the Indian subcontinent.
Chowdhury: The song-and-dance scene in my film refers to the dreams that these films offer. It is not the kind of cinema that I am making but these lovely films make us happy and bring a smile to people’s faces. I celebrate the magic of song-and-dance-cinema!

How does the film industry in Bangladesh relate to the big brother in India?
Chowdhury: The same way European cinema relates to Hollywood. Every day a new generation of filmmakers fights against the Bollywood hegemony. In some parts of India, like in Calcutta, Bengali films already gained a certain dominance through several box office hits. But we haven’t had children’s films over the last 20 years. Even the big films don’t sell, so why would a children’s film sell? My film did well in the festivals – I got awarded in Schlingel! – but still it doesn’t sell anywhere.

Gert Hermans

Panel “Telling stories for the new generation of European Cultural Diversity; co-production and cooperation through the lens of  European Children’s Film”

Participants and guests were warmly welcomed by Hilde Steenssens, representing the Filem’On festival, co-hosting this event together with KIDS Regio. Today’s moderator Elisabeth Wenk (KIDS Regio) in her introduction referred to her own first cinema experience and the impact it had. Films for young audiences can work as a tool to develop a sense for style and aesthetics, and to create one’s personal identity within the bigger context of a European cultural identity. 

PART 1: GOOD PRACTICES (4 PRESENTATIONS)

1. Camiel Schouwenaar, director of BIGMAN (The Netherlands / Germany)

The genesis of this film, produced by the Dutch company Rinkel Film, reflects the importance of European cooperation.

• Financing came from several European sources, like the Dutch Film Fund, Eurimages, the Cultural Fund, MDM, etc. With a big player like Netflix on board, financing went fast and smoothly.
• Tasks were divided between two co-producing nations (for instance, sound, make-up and colour-grading were done by the German partner).
• Development in the Cinekid Script Lab (coaching, structuring the script) and the Cinekid Directors Lab (preparing the shooting). Both pan-European programmes brought a profound added value to the project.
• For a film primarily targeting a domestic audience, the success in the festival circuit is a proof of its international appeal and of a universal appreciation.

Camiel Schouwenaar on directing young actors:

• A good casting is crucial, in terms of both the acting and the energy to endure and not to give up. The young cast all together should have the right dynamics. Therefor you can make them spend time together already before the shooting starts.
• The focus is on the quality of the script, to which young actors can add surprising elements and give great new impulses.
• Plenty of patience and diplomacy, and a solid preparation are needed to make it a positive experience, like it has been with BIGMAN.

2. Anna J. Ljungmark, producer of GABI, BETWEEN AGES 8 AND 13

Anna J. Ljungmark is producer, consultant, production editor,… for ‘House of Real’.

GABI, BETWEEN AGES 8 AND 13 follows a young person in its process of growing up, which has its consequences:

• Being extremely careful with content
• Getting the entire family involved (“but we wanted to stay 100% focused on Gabi”)
• Getting the school involved
• Permission is always required.
  

Several obstacles occurred:

• TV station TV8 considered the protagonist too vulnerable and foresaw the risk of exploitation, which scared off other broadcasters.
• Financing came from National Swedish Funding bodies, like the National Film Institute and the regional Film I Skåne + support from Creative Europe.
• The business model was risky: production came first, financing came second place (and was only finalized in a late stadium of production). Documentary makers can’t waste time!
• GABI was not financed nor labelled or promoted as a children’s film.

Current situation: the film has been traveling to 30 countries already, was awarded, sold to broadcasters, etc. Nevertheless the domestic cinema release in Sweden was problematic, as the target audience wasn’t clearly defined. Impact creation was done for very specific screenings. 

3. Ljubica Lukovic, script writer of HOW I LEARNED TO FLY

This Serbian-Croatian-Slovak-Bulgarian co-production was made after a script debut, based on a novel.

Challenges in writing:

• The delicate aspect of war that required 12 draft versions of the script;
• Combining 2 perspectives: Sofia and Grandma:
• Set in a specific time, so how to make sure to capture “the youth of today”? (young actors were involved in that process);
• Bringing to life Sofia’s rich phantasy world by using animations;
• Language problems to be solved (Serbian versus Croatian).

Challenges in shooting:

• Touristic region = busy region = expensive region;
• Extra Covid-measures were required;
• Weather circumstances were difficult;
• No extras on the set, so crew members served as extra actors.

Co-production circumstances:

• Funding from Creative Europe Media was crucial;
• Producing in low-capacity countries is key!
• Location scouting and casting was done in 3 countries.

Promotion:

• Targeting two different audience sections (kids 8–10; mothers 35+) with different trailers;
• ‘Feel good’ as key word;
• Croatian premiere in the arena of the prestigious Pula Film Festival;
• Making the film travel to small villages without cinema accommodation.

Result: number 1 in Serbian cinemas!

Conclusions:

• Kids’ choices regarding films to watch are steered by what the cinemas offer them. If we offer an alternative, they might choose for it.
• The tone of the story: Kindness can be cool!
• Children’s films can and should reflect the reality, not shying away from serious topics like war, with family reconciliation as a narrative background to our story.
• There was a narrative layer attracting the parents and adults.

4. Viviane Vanfleteren, producer of TITINA

This Norwegian animation in co-production with Belgium, telling a semi-realistic story about the first dog on the North Pole, has been successfully released in Norway. The marketing campaign was mainly targeting family audience with a well-known story, and famous actors doing the dubbing. There was one special open air screening with dogs in Bergen.

Co-production set up:

Only 2 countries were involved, which is both challenging and easy; control over one production pipeline can relatively easy be maintained. The development was done in Norway (2014), Belgium partnered in 2017. The total budget was € 8,2 million (increasing in a later stadium) for a production with a rather costly style of animation.

• Animation has a longer lifespan than live action;
• Already sold to 25 countries;
• No streamer on board; the entire focus is on a full cinema release + TV. 

PART 2: PANEL – Searching for common grounds

Extra panel member: Bernadette Forsthuber (Creative Europe Media)

What is the ‘super power’ of children’s film? Or in other words: What is its cultural impact?

Camiel Schouwenaar: These are stories from which you can learn about life, about others, watching other children with whom you can sympathize. Film education should not only deal with film techniques but also with content and stories.

Viviane Vanfleteren: Only films for pre-schoolers we still classify as “children’s films”, all film targeting an 8+ age group we consider as “movies”. We must seek for new qualifications and labels, not simply based on the element of violence, which can also be found in widely accepted titles like BAMBI, SNOWWHITE, THE LION KING, etc.

Anna J. Ljungmark: Children’s films are perceived differently and don’t get the same artistic acclaim as other titles. That’s why during the financing and production process, we never labelled our film as such. For marketing reasons we also refused to premier in a festival’s children section, as this would have resulted in less cinema screening windows and less media attention.

The importance of the development trajectory

Ljubica Lukovic: We made use of several development trajectories, which felt as a necessity as we wanted our film to travel, even with an initially local story. Script doctors have profoundly helped us to reach that goal.

How does this international funding system work?

Bernadette Forsthuber: Creative Europe supports training initiatives and markets; the final choice of film projects is made by the training initiatives. We aim for a balanced geographical spreading, which could even include non-European participants. 

We’re happy with the growing amount of projects from low capacity countries and the attention given to co-development and film education.

We support seven children’s film festivals in a festival network. 

Anna J. Ljungmark: My experience tells me: the better the budget, the better the film. Another key to a good film is the development and the time you invest in it. That is why training programmes are crucial.

What is the importance of co-production?

Anna J. Ljungmark: Co-producing will always create extra problems, for instance with languages, paperwork, and especially the international Covid situation. But producers often build networks through regular producing with the same partners.

Camiel Schouwenaar: Co-production should leave room for filmmakers to follow their own intuition. In our case we struggled with finding the right composer within our co-production agreement.

Viviane Vanfleteren: I would love to work more often with low capacity countries, but salaries here are simply too high.

Which stories should be told?

Ljubica Lukovic: This question should be answered by the children themselves; we should consult them about every aspect. Not only about the perspective of the child, but about the topic and how you present it.

What does Creative Europe want from producers?

Bernadette Forsthuber: Cooperation is crucial. That is why we need to get to know each other; we need to know what you are working on. Among European films, children’s films are often among the most successful – even scoring top 10 positions – so we should understand their potential.

This forum was organised in cooperation with the Vertretung des Freistaats Thüringen bei der EU, with the support of ECFA and the Creative Europe Media Desk.

Report: Gert Hermans

Na een spannende prijsuitreiking is de 16e editie van het Internationaal Filmfestival voor Jong Publiek, Filem’On tot een einde gekomen. We waren ontzettend blij om ons publiek eindelijk te kunnen verwelkomen in de Brusselse cinema’s! Het was een prachtige editie. We hebben er enorm van genoten en hopelijk jullie ook! Stiekem kijken we nu al uit naar de editie in 2023. Nog even geduld daarmee, maar dan wel nu de aankondiging van de alle laureaten van dit jaar!

Scroll naar beneden in het groene kader om de volledige nieuwsbrief te lezen.

Filem’On lanceert een oproep aan filmstudenten en jonge filmmakers voor een pitch voor een fictie-of documentaire film voor kinderen of tieners. Filem’On organiseert in samenwerking met Mediarte een workshop pitchen, waarin je alle in-en outs van het pitchen zal leren. Daarnaast worden 6 projecten geselecteerd die kans krijgen om hun kinder-en jeugdfilmproject te pitchen in aanwezigheid van producenten, met telkens persoonlijk feedback. Deze pitchsessie vindt plaats tijdens het Filem’On filmfestival op vrijdag 4 november in Brussel (tijdstip en locatie nog te bevestigen). De regisseur/scenarist met de beste pitch maakt kans op een schrijfbeurs van 500 euro aangeboden door Filem’On met steun van SABAM. Er worden twee prijzen weggeven, één voor een Nederlandstalig en één voor een Franstalig project. De workshop pitchen is openbaar voor iedereen, van filmstudent tot geïnteresseerde filmmakers.

We vragen een :
-fiche met persoonlijke en technische info (volledige naam, korte bio, genre, doelgroep leeftijd, duur (lang of kort))
-korte samenvatting van max 500 karakters
-bijkomende synopsis van max 2 A4 pagina’s (met intentie inbegrepen)

Als je wil deelnemen aan de pitchsessies voor de jury, stuur dan je pitch voor 30 september naar hilde@filemon.be

GIVEAWAY

Filem’on wilt jullie, onze kinderfilm fanaten, in de watten leggen. Of beter gezegd, op avontuur laten gaan! Daarom geven wij twee tickets weg voor “een stapje in de wereld” voor de filmvertoning van 19/3/2022 in @de_studio. PS: het is dan ook vaderdag 😉

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De winnaar wordt op 15/3 aangekondigd. Succes!