Seuls: Short Work 2' consists of three iconic surrealist films. Monsieur Fantômas (Ernst Moerman, 1937), Magritte ou La leçon de choses (Luc de Heusch, 1960) and L'imitation du cinéma (Marcel Mariën, 1959). This selection is an adaptation of the second Seuls short film programme, organised by Sabzian in 2018 and screened at the KASKcinema in Ghent. With Seuls: Singular moments from Belgian film history, Sabzian brings film programmes to the screen linked to the release of a unique selection of text material on it's website sabzian.be.

The online premiere is free and available for viewing in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The films with dialogue are always available with Dutch, French and English subtitles. The programme will be accompanied by articles in several languages and will be introduced online by Steven Jacobs, art historian specializing in the relationship between art and cinema.

Programme

Monsieur Fantômas - Ernst Moerman, 1937 , 17’
Magritte ou La leçon de choses - Luc de Heusch, 1960, 15’
L’imitation du cinéma - Marcel Mariën, 1959, 36’

About Seuls: Short Work 2’

This film programme offers three films by directors who played a key role in the Belgian surrealist movement. Ernst Moerman was associated with the Paris surrealists, wrote plays and produced one film, Monsieur Fantômas, in which a criminal mastermind, dressed in a dinner jacket, violates mores during his search for the beautiful Elvira. Luc de Heusch was an ethnologist and filmmaker who produced a variety of artist portraits, including Magritte ou La leçon de choses, 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. 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. Mariën's film L'imitation du cinéma provoked controversy when it was released in 1959 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.

Filmmaker, 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. Films that do not conform to any norm, regulation, school, fashion or theory. Their images are unique. The 'tradition' is characterised by independence, diversity, subjectivity, daring, inventiveness, audacity, and humorous subversion. Here, the inexhaustible imagination is central." The name Seuls ties in with this; it brings into focus a film culture consisting of a kinship between soloists who explore all possible mechanisms of imagination.