Cinephiles like me, take note!
The 51st Gent Film Fest (9-20 October 2024) announced its programme in the arthouse cinema Sphinks (by the way, it was opened in 1912 and originally called ‘Cinéma Scala’, only in the 1930s it got its current name and became the centre of cultural life in the city).
The festival is first and foremost an event in Belgium’s small but successful film industry. Programme director Wim De Witte looked the film shelves of the world’s festivals – from Locarno to Toronto – and selects films in line with the Ghent agenda. This year he reviewed 1,000 full and short, doc films.
And it has to be said, all sisters – on earrings. You can find a film for yourself in any genre. The main thing is that the festival compensates its secondary nature with a rich programme of debates, meetings with directors, cameramen and producers. The festival has a professional team and there are many volunteers in the student city – if you are passing through Ghent, you will be given a magazine with the programme at the station, which is convenient, although the navigation of the website is good: www.filmfestival.be.
The opening film in the presence of a world star, British actress with a childlike smile Emily Watson’s ‘Small Things Like These’ (about the Irish Magdalene Laundries – centres for women). Thus the festival opens female agenda and the red carpet is led by a face recognisable to all. Which does not detract from the merits of the film based on Claire Keegan’s novel.
For journalists, the avant-premiere of the festival, to my great pleasure, was a Dan Brown-style detective film ‘Conclave’ with Rafe Fiennes about the election of the ‘new Pope’. This film touches on all the rapper points of the current agenda.
Which may be close to ‘born in the USSR’:
In S. Parajanov’s I will avenge this world with LOVE, director Zara Jan returns to her homeland of Armenia and finds in Parajanov’s work an example of how to live. His home becomes a place of inspiration and a point of no return to toxic reality. Through Parajanov’s life and work, the theme of human freedom in unfree conditions, limited by the borders of a totalitarian state or the barbed wire around the camp, takes on a new meaning.
What is interesting for me personally and for art lovers:
The festival’s much-loved VIDEODROOM (cinema with live music) project in the Art Deco masterpiece Vooruit on 12 October presents Henri Storcks’ slightly naïve, to modern eyes, 1948 doc film about the work of Peter Paul Rubens – a real art history lesson. Johannes Verschaeve of The Van Jets makes the film collide and merge with his dreamy avant-pop music.
P.S. Ghent is very much in favour of Indian summer. The festival is a reason to visit this city at its best.
