Eric Pauwels

Eric Pauwels

Birth : 1953-11-02, Antwerp, Belgium

History

Filmmaker, writer and film lecturer Eric Pauwels started his career with what he calls ‘cinéma mémoire’, or ethnographic documentary. He obtained his PHD in cinematography in Paris with a documentary on the ‘possessed’ in Indonesia. Afterwards, eager to step out of his role of being a spectator, Pauwels begins to make dance videos and works of fiction. The latter are so-called ‘half films’: half documentary, half fiction. But which distance does one keep to one’s subjects? Pauwels’ answer is clear: eliminate the distance and become a subject amongst your subjects. For him, cinema and life should ideally coincide; fiction should penetrate documentary.

Movies

Journal de septembre
Writer
A film made of objects, faces and texts; of lost cats, of found pictures, cut-outs, recreations; a poetic subversion in diary form, one that breaks the calendar into a novel, driving relentlessly as a journey to the end of the world.
Journal de septembre
Producer
A film made of objects, faces and texts; of lost cats, of found pictures, cut-outs, recreations; a poetic subversion in diary form, one that breaks the calendar into a novel, driving relentlessly as a journey to the end of the world.
Journal de septembre
Director of Photography
A film made of objects, faces and texts; of lost cats, of found pictures, cut-outs, recreations; a poetic subversion in diary form, one that breaks the calendar into a novel, driving relentlessly as a journey to the end of the world.
Journal de septembre
Director
A film made of objects, faces and texts; of lost cats, of found pictures, cut-outs, recreations; a poetic subversion in diary form, one that breaks the calendar into a novel, driving relentlessly as a journey to the end of the world.
To Split or not to Split
Director
Invited to participate in a residency program in Split, Croatia, in October 2016, the film maker created this "little" video dealing with the theme of exile, expressing his thoughts on the matter in English.
The Second Night
Writer
On the death of his mother, a filmmaker makes a film to see how much her disappearance has changed his vision of the world. It is an opportunity for him to look back over his relationship with her: a relationship that made him a free individual, as a man and as a filmmaker. The second night is the final part of a trilogy that began with Letter from a filmmaker to his daughter, which was followed by Dreaming films. The making of this " Cabin Trilogy" is the fruit of fifteen years of work and reflection.
The Second Night
Director
On the death of his mother, a filmmaker makes a film to see how much her disappearance has changed his vision of the world. It is an opportunity for him to look back over his relationship with her: a relationship that made him a free individual, as a man and as a filmmaker. The second night is the final part of a trilogy that began with Letter from a filmmaker to his daughter, which was followed by Dreaming films. The making of this " Cabin Trilogy" is the fruit of fifteen years of work and reflection.
The Dreamed Films
Self/Narrator
Belgian filmmaker Eric Pauwels' meditation on dream, travel and film.
The Dreamed Films
Director
Belgian filmmaker Eric Pauwels' meditation on dream, travel and film.
Letter from a Filmmaker to His Daughter
Writer
Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille is a playful, free and personal film in the form of a letter, a film interwoven with a thousand stories knit together with different textures, a book of images where a filmmaker shows the images and the stories he wants to share.
Letter from a Filmmaker to His Daughter
Director of Photography
Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille is a playful, free and personal film in the form of a letter, a film interwoven with a thousand stories knit together with different textures, a book of images where a filmmaker shows the images and the stories he wants to share.
Letter from a Filmmaker to His Daughter
Director
Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille is a playful, free and personal film in the form of a letter, a film interwoven with a thousand stories knit together with different textures, a book of images where a filmmaker shows the images and the stories he wants to share.
Letter to Jean Rouch
Script
This film is a moving tribute to French filmmaker Jean Rouch. Pauwels, a former collaborator of Rouch, accompanies him on a trip to Japan. In this cinematic letter, which he himself calls “a journey into the memory”, Pauwels philosophises about the essence of cinema and, consequently, of life.
Letter to Jean Rouch
Director
This film is a moving tribute to French filmmaker Jean Rouch. Pauwels, a former collaborator of Rouch, accompanies him on a trip to Japan. In this cinematic letter, which he himself calls “a journey into the memory”, Pauwels philosophises about the essence of cinema and, consequently, of life.
Les rives du fleuve
Director
A film on the gestures of work, those of a sculptor, a designer, a composer and dancers. A sketch of their relationship to the world subjected to the double gaze of fiction and documentary.
Trois danses hongroises de Brahms
Director of Photography
Trois danses hongroises de Brahms
Director
The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian
Sound
"The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian" takes the form of a personal travel notebook. A travel through Europe in search of thirty pictures of this martyrdom. The film is conceived as a voyage of initiation, an imaginary reportage...
The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian
Cinematography
"The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian" takes the form of a personal travel notebook. A travel through Europe in search of thirty pictures of this martyrdom. The film is conceived as a voyage of initiation, an imaginary reportage...
The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian
Producer
"The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian" takes the form of a personal travel notebook. A travel through Europe in search of thirty pictures of this martyrdom. The film is conceived as a voyage of initiation, an imaginary reportage...
The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian
Writer
"The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian" takes the form of a personal travel notebook. A travel through Europe in search of thirty pictures of this martyrdom. The film is conceived as a voyage of initiation, an imaginary reportage...
The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian
Director
"The iconographic journey: the martyrdom of San Sebastian" takes the form of a personal travel notebook. A travel through Europe in search of thirty pictures of this martyrdom. The film is conceived as a voyage of initiation, an imaginary reportage...
Violin Fase
Director
In Violin Fase, Eric Pauwels twirls the camera around the body of dancer and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Through this process, Pauwels creates a new relationship between camera and dancer, but also between body and dance, dance and cinema. Consisting of a geometrical and minimalist choreographic structure filmed in four uninterrupted takes, the artist’s camera captures a woman dedicated to exploring the boundaries of physical exhaustion.
Un film
Director
Motorway, roads, villages of Northern France, Flanders. A man with a Super 8 camera films his route, the villagers and himself. Portraits, self-portrait. As the images unfold a young villager, Josse, is intrigued by the camera’s presence. For the cameraman the lens is an eye with which one films reality, for the villager the camera represents CINEMA, the magic of fiction. Josse accosts the cameraman and leads him across the fields where his girlfriend joins them. The outing becomes their production, with themselves in front of the camera. Games. Gradually diverted by Josse’s enthousiasme the film slides into moments of fiction, until its inevitable breakdown.