MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE

by Boris LEHMAN
1978 / 16mm / color-b&w / sound / 1 screen / 145' 00

"A living chronicle of the inhabitants of the Béguinage neighborhood—so named because it is located on the site of the former Béguinage of Brussels. Designed as an encyclopedic inventory, the film is composed of about thirty chapters interwoven like the pieces of a puzzle, or like the many intersecting galleries of a termite mound. It unfolds in the spaces and interstices of a single day, beginning at dawn and ending at night." — Boris Lehman

Born in Lausanne, filmmaker, actor, and critic Boris Lehman (1944–) began his film studies at INSAS (Institut Supérieur des Arts) in 1962, the year it was founded. After graduating, he worked for 18 years as an animator at the Club Antonin Artaud, an extramural psychiatric center aimed at socially and culturally reintegrating patients.

Creating films that blur the line between documentary and fiction, Lehman’s cinema is often described as "first-person cinema": his work blends personal reflections, his own life experiences, and those of the world around him. In addition to being one of Belgium’s most prolific filmmakers—with around 400 films to his name—he has also collaborated with various Belgian filmmakers (including Chantal Akerman, Samy Szlingerbaum, and Henri Storck, as a co-writer, assistant, or actor) and has consistently written about cinema.

This film, his eighth, holds a special place in his life. Dedicated to his recently deceased parents, it marks the end of his long tenure at the Antonin Artaud Center. Those years coincided with the era of wild "Bruxellisation» - the rampant demolition of Brussels’ vibrant, working-class urban fabric by developers. The film is steeped in this context: the end of an era, a neighborhood, and the elderly residents who were its main actors.

“Like many of us, I had heard that Boris was making—or was going to make—a film about the Béguinage. I didn’t know if it was really happening, or if it was just in his head, or in his heart. For nearly two years, we received fragments of information, details, but in a roundabout way, as if it were a secret or something fragile. Usually, filming in a city makes noise: you hear about it, you see big trucks, lights, crowds, sometimes an actress... and then the artists leave, and it’s over. Boris’s work, however, is solitary, silent work—unassuming, unseen, the slow, patient labor of a craftsman. It is this patience, this closeness to people, that allows him to film like this, to capture sounds... a city... so many things. He doesn’t provoke or force events or emotions; he waits, and sometimes, he is rewarded.

He spent two years of his life filming part of our city—fortunately, because now, already, nothing is the same: houses are destroyed or condemned, some people were forced to move, others have disappeared, taking with them a part of the present that is already our past: songs, jokes, a way of speaking, a language, a rhythm of life. This film is a bit of our memory." — Chantal Akerman

2 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format DCP on server
screen 1,37 (single screen)
sound sound
rental fee 440,00 €

distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
screen 1,37 (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound sound
rental fee 440,00 €