Sat 24 May 2025 - 18:00
Three short documentaries by the two masters of the Low Countries. Storck's portrait of Ostend is also an investigation of cinematographic parameters. Ivens' camera meticulously inspects a new bridge in Rotterdam. Plus their joint masterpiece about the miserable living conditions of miners in the Borinage, victims of capitalism.
Henri Storck (Ostend 1907 - Brussels 1999) lived through the whole history of cinema, passing from silent to sound, and from experimental to commercial films. He is recognised as a pioneer of Belgian cinema and a key figure in documentary. An eyewitness of his times, he made socially engaged films, but also poetic and experimental short films, films on art and a fiction feature. His body of work consists of 70 films, including a series of accounts on his native city of Ostend of which he was the chronicler and which remained, for him, the Queen of beaches.
