The 'tradition' is characterised by independence, diversity, subjectivity, daring, inventiveness, audacity, and humorous subversion. Films that do not conform to any norm, regulation, school, fashion or theory. Mariën's film L'imitation du cinéma (1960) provoked controversy when it was released in 1960 due to its suggestive linking of erotic images with a pseudo-religious story about a man who develops a desire to be crucified, including a casual adventure with a prostitute.įilmmaker, cinema and Zen teacher Konrad Maquestieau once typified Belgian cinema anti-conformist: 'This country harbours a tradition in which individuals, completely unrelated to each other, manage to make films in the most idiosyncratic way. Marcel Mariën was not only an adventurous intellectual who spent time in various surrealist circles, but also a devoted admirer, interpreter and sometimes artistic partner of René Magritte.

Luc de Heusch was an ethnologist and filmmaker who produced a variety of artist portraits, including Magritte ou La leçon de choses (1960), a film about the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, in which pictorial and cinematographic images interact and contradict each other, generating an interplay between the works of art and the way they are staged by the filmmaker. Ernst Moerman was associated with the Paris surrealists, wrote plays and produced one film, Monsieur Fantômas (1937), in which a criminal mastermind, dressed in a dinner jacket, violates mores during his search for the beautiful Elvira. This film programme offers three films by directors who played a key role in the Belgian surrealist movement. Singular Moments in Belgian Film History is a series of film programs accompanied by the publication of unique texts by Belgian filmmakers and writers on Sabzian’s website. This selection is an adaptation of the second Seuls short film programme, organised by Sabzian in 2018 and screened at the KASKcinema in Ghent. On April 14th at 19:30 CET, Seuls: Short Work 2’ will premiere on Avila, a short film programme compiled by Sabzian.

Objects by Luc De Heusch