HD, 11’20”, 16:9, colour, stereo, 2016
Supported by Centrale for Contemporary Art Brussels; Flemish Community; ARGOS Centre for Art and Media Brussels
Camera Mark Drewe
Editing Pieter Geenen
Sound recording Mark Drewe; Pieter Geenen; Laszlo Umbreit
Sound design Laszlo Umbreit
Colour grading, post-production & mastering Michaël Cinquin at Charbon Studio
On the walls of the local Belgian Club in Delhi, Ontario (Canada) hangs a painting depicting Saint Catherine’s Square, a square in the heart of the Belgian Capital of Brussels. For the many Belgian immigrants in this particular Canadian region the painting evokes the memory connected to it, which helps to define and enhance the community’s identity.
home metaphorically illustrates the concept of communities, the construction of national identity and the potential loss of it after migration. Both realities, Brussels and Canada, are connected by the sound, which mutates from the busy square in Brussels to the deserted space of the club of the Belgian diaspora.
This film travels from the detailed and vivid memory of a place and time once called home, to the vague and blurred remains of this memory, which got exchanged for a new reality, a new home.
At the point where the first generation of Belgian immigrants is vanishing the Delhi Belgian Club is closing down for good. We’re allowed to cast one last glance at what once has been and is about to disappear forever now cultural assimilation has set in.
Selected exhibitions and screening:
FLIGHT / Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova Genoa 2020; Nunnery Gallery London 2018; That One Film Festival Muncie 2018; aDifferent Festival Milwaukee 2018; ARGOS Centre for Art and Media Brussels 2017; Dobra Festival Internacional de Cinema Experimental Rio de Janeiro 2017: Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles Paris 2017; West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival Morgantown 2017; Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival Hawick 2017; Centrale for Contemporary Art Brussels 2016