SIC Day 2 w/ Sven Augustijnen + Le Fresnoy

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Programme

10:00-13:00 | Case-study: Spectres, by Sven Augustijnen

14:00-16:00 | Screening 1 Le Fresnoy : An Ocean of Images — Perception(s) and Post-Truth

16:30-18:30 | Screening 2 Le Fresnoy : Communities, groups, and collective myths

10:00-13:00 | Case-study: Spectres, by Sven Augustijnen

video, color, 16:9, French spoken, BE, 2011, 104’

Fifty years after his assassination, Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, is back to haunt Belgium. Through commemorations and encounters,the top-ranking Belgian civil servant who was in Elisabethville on that tragic day of 17 January 1961 attempts to exorcise the ghosts of the past. To the sound of St John Passion by J.S. Bach, Spectres immerses us into one of the darkest days of the decolonisation of the Belgian Congo. An examination of the biopolitical body, this feature-length film by Sven Augustijnen exposes the fine line separating legitimisation and historiography and the traumatic issue of responsibility and debt.

Spectres won the Public Libraries Prize and GNCR Prize and received a special mention from the jury of the International Competition at FID Marseille (FR). It won the Prize of the Flemish Community at Festival Filmer à Tout Prix (BE).

In the presence of Sven Augustijnen.

14:00-16:00 | Screening 1 Le Fresnoy : An Ocean of Images — Perception(s) and Post-Truth

This year, SoundImageCulture has invited artist and filmmaker Stéphanie Roland, alumna of both SIC and Le Fresnoy, to curate a series of screenings. For each session, Stéphanie brings together a selection of short films from Le Fresnoy, the renowned Studio national des arts contemporains in France.

Through these programs, we open a space for diverse, poetic, and thought-provoking works, a meeting ground for voices that explore the image in all its forms, from the intimate to the political, the speculative to the visceral. Each screening will offer new perspectives, sensorial experiences, and moments of resonance.

For this first session, we are pleased to present four films. All the films will have English subtitles.

Le Park, Randa Maroufi (2015, 14 min)
A slow meandering camera in an abandoned amusement park in the heart of Casablanca. The film draws a portrait of the youth who frequent this place and exposes snapshots of their life, meticulously reframed and often inspired by images found on social networks. Desire to question different points of view and to multiply the possibilities: politically charged moments, danger frozen in time, instants before acting out... between immediacy and illusion, audience observes «something about to happen» and is invited to accept an experience of duration.

Contraindre, Fleury Fontaine (2020, 11 min)
We are all prisoners of a nationality, a social condition, a skin color—constraints to which the police and state repression force us to resign ourselves. This film tells the story of how bodies suffer under blows, coercion, and humiliation.

Love and Revenge, Anhar Salem (2021, 31 min)
Posing, selfies, and the imaginary freedom through a journey into a girl teen’s practises on social media. The desire to exist only as an image collapsed when she lost the control over her avatar. From a distance, Anhar casts two girls who are shooting and acting for the movie as fictionalized versions of themselves. Exploring and hovering between private and public life.

One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean, Yuyan Wang (2022, 11 min)
One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception. Composed of micro-events from "satisfying video" that swarm on the internet, an abstract narrative unfolds by referring to trance and minimal music. It's an exploration of a world that can all too often fall into the superficial that recognises its pleasures as well as its pitfalls.

16:30-18:30 | Screening 2 Le Fresnoy : Communities, groups, and collective myths

In this second screening session of the day, we present three short films that explore the dynamics of communities, the power of collective myths, and shared narratives.

All the films will have English subtitles.

Que Je Tombe Tout Le Temps, Eduardo Williams (2013, 15 min)
In search of a seed, a young man emerges from the underground where he spends time with his friends. Together, they embark on a long digestive journey.

Soum, Alice Brygo (2022, 31 min)
In the Parisian outskirts, Inti, Jai and Paulo are looking for an empty place. A fissure through which could slip the generation of trouble they embody, in-between the laws of the old world and the uncertainty of the one to come. A portrait of our time that oscillates between documentary, performance art and surrealism.

Parade, Ines Sieulle (2021, 20 min)
A night doctor walks through a village invaded by the Wohlfahrtia Magnifica fly. Indoor and outdoor, winter tourist activities in Bessans rub shoulders with the rurality of local residents.