Carte Blanche: Auguste Orts / C0N10UR

At the invitation of CINEMATEK and as a prelude to C0N10UR (09.09.23 - 05.11.2023), Auguste Orts presents film works by several artists participating in the post-summer biennale: elephy, Mieriën Coppens & Elie Maissin, Annik Leroy, Rosine Mbakam and Subversive Film. These filmmakers were each invited to curate part of the programme, combining their own work with titles from the archive of CINEMATEK.

Elephy is a Brussels-based production and distribution platform for film and media arts founded by Rebecca Jane Arthur, Chloë Delanghe, Eva Giolo and Christina Stuhlberger. Elephy supports its productions through a professional framework run by artists, ensuring that they can be made with the utmost artistic freedom. In 2019, elephy began organising MIA (Moving Image Atelier), a series of workshops for artists and filmmakers working alone or with a small team in the undefined territory between cinema and visual arts.

Mieriën Coppens and Elie Maissin made seven films in less than five years, and no fewer than three are currently in the pipeline. The striking productivity of these young Brussels filmmakers is due not only to drive but just as much to vision and method. Their embedding in the Brussels militant collective La Voix des Sans Papiers, which uses organised occupations of empty premises to bring undocumented migrants out of the shadows and isolation and raise their demands to political levels, is the humus of their film practice.

War is ever-present in the work of Brussels-based photographer and filmmaker Annik Leroy. The barely perceptible, sombre vibrations that continuously invade our daily lives and interpersonal relationships are palpable throughout all the films, videos and installations Leroy has made since 1980, such as the films In der Dämmerstunde - Berlin (1980), Vers la mer (1999) and the installation Cell 719 (2006). Somewhere between speculation and reality, her works explore the darker parts of European history.

Rosine Mbakam's documentaries are exercises in reconfiguring power relations. Mbakam resolutely practices a kind of documentary filmmaking that agitates against both the racist, colonial roots of documentary ethnography and the persistent philanthropic paternalism of Western renderings of the African continent and its populations. With an open perspective full of generous curiosity, Mbakam proceeds thoughtfully and carefully in her attack on the colonial gaze.

Subversive Film is a film research and production collective that aims to shed new light on historical works related to Palestine and the Palestinian region, encourage support for film preservation and explore archival practices. Their ongoing and long-term projects explore this cine-historical field, which includes digitally re-releasing previously under-exposed films, curating screening cycles of rare films, releasing publications and working out other forms of interventions. Subversive Film, founded in 2011, is based between Ramallah and Brussels.

Discover the full programme here.

In collaboration with Auguste Orts, Artbrussels and CINEMATEK.