Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers. The festival takes place 16 – 21 June in venues across London and the programme offers a chance to see the best in contemporary, international documentary as well as filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, workshops, live music, networking and parties. The Festival is spotlighting five documentaries made by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
Early Works: The Dardennes #1 19 June at 20.50 at ICA
When the Boat of Léon M. Went Down the Meuse River for the First Time (1979)
This early poetic documentary follows the 1960 general strike in Belgium’s Meuse River industrial region by juxtaposing archival footage of the events against interviews with locals who recount their memories of the strike and the labor union and government response. Structuring the film and serving as its meditative center is the solo, self-sufficient voyage of a former striker up the river to Liège in a hand-built boat.
Screening with
R… Ne Répond Plus (1982)
This documentary further reveals the Dardennes’ fascination with alternative modes for sharing and distributing information. Where For The War To End The Walls Should Have Crumbled recounts the history of a workers’ newspaper, R…No Longer Answers focuses on Europe’s vast network of amateur, independent and pirate radio broadcasters. The film is a collage, filmed at a variety of locations, from radio studios to snowy landscapes where transmitters are set up. Just as the broadcasters bring together far-flung communities of listeners, the Dardennes’ montage creates a whole out of this network of spaces and people. Full details.
Early Works: The Dardennes #2 20 June at 16.00 at Regent Street Cinema
Look at Jonathan (1983)
The Dardennes’ spirited portrait film depicts Jean Louvet, a Walloon dramatist who fuses Brechtian aesthetics with Sartrean existentialism to capture the working class experiences and heart of Belgium’s Francophone community during the mid- and late 20th century. An experimental biopic of sorts, Look at Jonathan uses excerpts from Louvet’s work, including some autobiographical writings, to tell the story of his life and to document the work of his theatre company in La Louvière. Full details.
Early Works: The Dardennes #3 21 June at 16.30 at Cine Lumiere
For The War to End the Walls Should Have Crumbled (1980)
Looking back to the momentous events of Belgium’s general strike in 1960, For the War to End… focuses on the efforts of Edmond G. and colleagues at the Cockerill steel plant in Seraing to organize and secretly publish a workers’ newspaper between 1961 and 1969. A stirring depiction of communal resistance, For the War to End… also provides an insightful portrait of the Dardennes’ hometown, revisiting the sites of labor and tracing the routes of the newspaper’s circulation, providing a poetic tribute to Seraing’s industrial urban landscape.
Screening with
Lessons From A University on the Fly (1982)
Lessons From a University on The Fly compiles a series of intimate portraits of Polish immigrants living in Belgium. Filmed for television by the Dardennes in 1982, the film links the Dardennes’ documentaries with their depiction of the beleaguered protagonists of their subsequent fiction films, and marks the beginning of the Dardennes’ interest in the lives of immigrants. Full details.
