Gerard-Jan Claes

Gerard-Jan Claes (Belgium, 1987) is a filmmaker, lecturer, author, both founder and artistic director of the online film magazine Sabzian (www.sabzian.be), and co-founder of Avila (www.avilafilm.be), a film distributor and online video platform for Belgian cinema. As a filmmaker, he collaborates with Olivia Rochette (Belgium, 1987). Their shared filmography consists of Because We Are Visual (2010), Rain (2012), Grands travaux (2016), Mitten (2019) and Kind Hearts (2022). Since 2009, the duo provides audiovisual work for choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her dance company Rosas. Claes teaches at P.A.R.T.S. and LUCA School of Arts.

The entrancing love story of Billie and Lucas, a young Brussels couple. The film paints a candid portrait of the formative but also uncertain facets of every (first) love.

A patient look at the final weeks of rehearsal of Mitten wir im Leben sind, a performance by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, her dance company Rosas and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, to Bach’s cello suites.

At a vocational school in Brussels, a couple of boys follow a training to become an electrician. The film documents and stages the lessons at school and their conversations about the future, love and work.

Documentary on the transmission of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s contemporary Rosas choreography to the classically-trained ballet dancers of the world-renowned Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris.

By means of visual material gathered from online sources, the cineastes create a unique poetic realm in which thoughts, fears, desires and worries, shared via the webcam, merge together.

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