Laszlo Umbreit

The curators invited a group of artists to be inspired by the work of the well-known, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. They specifically presented them News from Home, the 1976 feature film with two equal main characters: the island of Manhattan, New York where the director resides and her mother in Brussels who, through a stream of letters, demands increasingly urgent news.

Juste un Mouvement is a free take on La Chinoise, a Jean-Luc Godard movie shot in 1967 in Paris. Reallocating its roles and characters fifty years later in Dakar, and updating its plot, this new version offers a meditation on the relationship between politics, justice and memory. Although not anymore alive, Omar Blondin Diop, the only actual Maoist student in the original movie, now becomes the key character.

Focusing on underground locations such as quarries, tunnels and caves, the filmmakers investigate the insatiable human desire to extract natural resources from the ground. In three chapters, they explore the healing powers of radon gas found in Austria, the powerful energy felt in stones in Switzerland, and the pearls created by sweat and blood found in Polish caves, a memento of those who died there. Together, these chapters form a geological and cultural history of our (often bodily) relation to the subsoil of the Earth, enabling different modes of knowing and experiencing the world. Like Castorp, the viewer is hence placed in a different reality, and invited to take "the ride into the mountains to be healed".

Europe's far north, where Russia and Norway meet, is one of the least populated areas in the world. Nevertheless human intervention is visible in almost every breathtaking vista Alexis Destoop recorded. Cold, calm footage of snowfields, bodies of water, industry and research stations pass by, while a narrator from the near future reports on an investigation whose object remains concealed. In the meantime he reflects on the border as a political construct, the intangible, mythical power of nature and the expansion of fossil-fuel extraction to areas that were virtually impenetrable before global warming. Humming, growling machines provide constant background buzz in this subjective exploration of a landscape where past and future meld. Northern Drift is an aesthetic, philosophical investigation of mankind and its environment – a relationship akin to shadow-boxing.

Europe's far north, where Russia and Norway meet, is one of the least populated areas in the world. Nevertheless human intervention is visible in almost every breathtaking vista Alexis Destoop recorded. Cold, calm footage of snowfields, bodies of water, industry and research stations pass by, while a narrator from the near future reports on an investigation whose object remains concealed. In the meantime he reflects on the border as a political construct, the intangible, mythical power of nature and the expansion of fossil-fuel extraction to areas that were virtually impenetrable before global warming. Humming, growling machines provide constant background buzz in this subjective exploration of a landscape where past and future meld. Northern Drift is an aesthetic, philosophical investigation of mankind and its environment – a relationship akin to shadow-boxing.

Diamonds are forever imagined as an object of desire that circulates as condensed wealth. They can easily carve through a lens or blind our eyes, severing our fetishistic attachment to the glitter of commodities. A perfect cut, carving lines into our retina, separating screen and lens, stone and fluid.

This is the portrait of an industrial city with its collapses, mutations, landscapes and language. A film that features René Magritte, a camp of homeless people, key figures in urban revival, the inventor of the Big Bang, Les Zèbres (Royal Charleroi Sporting Club) , socialism, the mute astonishment of childhood…

Created thanks to the funds provided for the production of new artworks awarded to Dora García for the 45th PIAC, The Joycean Society is a film about a book club dedicated to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake; The Zurich-based group of students, admirers and connoisseurs read and dissect passages from what is often said to be "the most difficult book in the world".

Created thanks to the funds provided for the production of new artworks awarded to Dora García for the 45th PIAC, The Joycean Society is a film about a book club dedicated to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake; The Zurich-based group of students, admirers and connoisseurs read and dissect passages from what is often said to be "the most difficult book in the world".