One of the new associated artists at Beursschouwburg is the Brussels based filmmaker Victoire Karera Kampire. She curates an evening with two films that both look in their own distinct way at the same part of the world: the Southern USA. While rooted in the banal day to day lives of their protagonists/witnesses, both films are haunted by the historical past of this region and its racial representations.

For the aftertalk Victoire is joined by another exciting voice from the cinema scene in Belgium-and-beyond, director and performer Maxime Jean-Baptiste.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

(RaMell Ross, 2018, 1h 16min)
In the lives of protagonists Daniel and Quincy, quotidian moments and the surrounding southern landscape are given importance, drawing poetic comparisons between historical symbols and the African American banal. Images are woven together to replace narrative arcs with visual movements. Composed of intimate moments of people sharing a community, the film allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Southern USA - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.

Sud

(Chantal Akerman, 1999, 1h 11min)
An eclectic and edgy journey through the Southern USA after a Black man named James Byrd Jr. was gruesomely murdered by three white men. This is neither an anatomy of his murder nor the autopsy of James Byrd Jr., whose presence haunts the entire film, but rather an evocation of how this event fits into a landscape and climate both mentally and physically. Akermans lingering gaze unsettles the seemingly ordinary scenery, revealing the violent history that hides in the silence of the South.

about

Victoire Karera Kampire (1990) is a Rwandan-Belgian director and sound designer. She holds a Master's degree in New Media and Society (VUB), and is a graduate from LUCA School of Arts, in audiovisual arts. At the heart of her artistic quest, is the notion of absence, filling her films - places of hallucinated archives and experimentation at the border of documentary and fiction - with ghostly presences. Working and exploring beyond the single screen experience, she also creates video pieces for theater and for exhibition spaces, (« it is like a finger pointing a way to the moon » in collaboration with Moya Michael @ KVS-WIELS ; « Joy Boy, A tribute to Julius Eastman » in collaboration with Collectif Faire-Part, Fallon Mayanja et Mawena Yahouessi @ deSingel). In parallel to her filmmaking practice, Victoire Karera K. has worked as a documentary research assistant on Johan Grimonprez's last feature film “Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat”, awarded at Sundance and nominated at the Oscars. She is currently working on a documentary project titled "Ejo", which was selected for the Doc Lab Montreal 2024 from the festival RIDM. And last but not least Victoire is currently one of the 2024–2025 associated artists right here at Beursschouwburg <3
https://www.instagram.com/victoire.karera/

Maxime Jean-Baptiste (1993), based between Brussels and Paris, grew up in the context of the Guyanese and West Indian diaspora in France. He studied visual arts at erg (Brussels) and media arts at KASK (Ghent). His audiovisual and performance work focuses on archives and forms of re-enactment as a perspective for conceiving a living, embodied memory. The short documentary Nou voix (2018), about his father's participation as an extra in a film about the history of French Guyana, received the Jury Prize at the Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux in Paris. Other shorts, such as Listen to the beat of our images (2021), co-directed with his sister Audrey, and Moune Ô (2022) were selected for several festivals around the globe. In 2024 Maxime made his fiction feature debut with Kouté vwa, also set in French Guyana. The film premiered at the 77th edition of Locarno Film Festival and received the Special Jury Prize as well as the special mention from the First Feature Awards.
https://www.instagram.com/koutevwa/