Moving Along

Come and view the looped screening as many times as you like, and even combine it with: WED 23.09 - masterclass w/ SoundImageCulture (SIC) Deborah Stratman — The Stumble as a Map >> FRI 25.09 - screening + aftertalk Kumail Syed — Les enfants ont des oreilles >> about This fall, the Beursschouwburg film programme looks at the ways cars, trains, metros and other forms of transportation have transformed our daily lives and reshaped the environments around us. From the arrival of the automobile as a mass consumer product to the construction of motorways, parking lots and vast infrastructures designed to keep us moving, transportation has profoundly altered the scale, rhythm and appearance of our cities. The films in the programme observe these changes from different perspectives. They look at traffic and congestion, but also at labour, leisure, architecture, and the simple act of walking. They ask who our cities are designed for, who gets to move freely, and what happens to the people and places that get in the way. The programme also understands mobility in its broader social sense: as social mobility, moving between neighbourhoods, milieus and social classes, while encountering, negotiating and acknowledging the social and symbolic boundaries that surround us. Sometimes critical, sometimes playful or absurd, these films invite us to look again at the seemingly ordinary systems that organise how we move through the world. programme 1 — NO ICE + De Straat + Rijksweg N1 Three films that look at the ways architecture and infrastructure shape everyday life. Total duration: 100min NO ICE - Denicolai & Provoost, 2002, 14min Your favourite Brussels artist duo tackle the regulation of public space by having eight ice cream vans perform a guerillia ballet at a strategic roundabout (that is currently and notoriously under construction!) creating a s-creaming sound effect announcing the small pleasures of summer city life. De Straat - Jef Cornelis, 1972, 42min, ENG spoken “Of the street not much is left but a traffic road – a movement machine, as Le Corbusier described it [...] The habitable space of the city, the street, has degenerated into a pure locus for traffic.” Rijksweg N1 - Jef Cornelis, 1978, 43min, NL spoken, ENG subtitles Whilst Rijksweg N1 depicts the sterility of life along Belgium’s first national road, this film by legendary television director Jef Cornelis in collaboration with architecture critic Geert Bekaert nevertheless shows that people carry on living there as if nothing were amiss. 2 — Kid Auto Races at Venice + Trafic Two comedies about bodies caught in the machinery of modern mobility. Chaplin and Tati turn traffic and transportation into stages for a struggle between the systems we build to keep things moving and the unpredictable people who inhabit them. Total duration: 102min Kid Auto Races at Venice - Henry Lehrman, 1914, 6min Charlie Chaplin’s character Little Tramp repeatedly disrupts the carefully organised spectacle of the car race, getting in the way of cameras, crowds and automobiles. Trafic - Jacques Tati, 1971, 96min, FR+NL+ENG spoken, ENG subtitles Monsieur Hulot is working on a revolutionary camping car that he must bring to an international automobile exhibition in Amsterdam. Along the way, he encounters traffic jams, breakdowns, bureaucracy and countless unexpected obstacles that continually delay his journey. Despite all the setbacks, Hulot remains cheerful, while the chaos around him only continues to grow. 3 — Ghost Tropic - Bas Devos, 2019, 85min, ENG subtitles After missing the last metro home, Khadija begins a long journey on foot through Brussels at night. Along the way, she encounters people who, like her, are moving through the city outside its usual rhythms. 4 — Rangierer + Avec le sang des autres From the railway yard to the factory town, movement becomes inseparable from labour, and labour from the structures that organise society. Total duration: 74min Rangierer - Jürgen Böttcher, 1984, 22min A stylised, dignified, and violent look at the painstaking and exhausting work of the switchmen at Dresden-Friedrichstadt station, day and night, in all weathers, as they uncouple and couple around 1,600 freight cars during a single shift. Avec le sang des autres - Bruno Muel, Groupe Medvedkine de Sochaux, 1974, 52min "A descent into hell. The assembly line at Peugeot – a deafening image. This is the essence of the Peugeot empire: the relentless exploitation of human labour. And beyond that, it continues with shops, supermarkets, buses, entertainment, holidays, housing, the city itself – all part of the Peugeot landscape. As we follow the circuit, everything is traced back to the Peugeot family."