Gerard-Jan Claes

Gerard-Jan Claes (Belgium, 1987) is a filmmaker, lecturer, and both founder and artistic director of the online film journal Sabzian, and co-founder of Avila, a film distributor and online video platform for Belgian cinema. His shared filmography with Olivia Rochette consists of Because We Are Visual (2010), Rain (2012), Grands travaux (2016), Mitten (2019) and Kind Hearts (2022). Since 2009, the duo provides audiovisual work for choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her dance company Rosas. Claes teaches at P.A.R.T.S. and LUCA School of Arts.

Spotlight

Fri, 06/20/2025 - 09:30

Here I Am

Jonas Mekas’ Self Portrait (1980)

“We’re running?” Mekas asks the cameraman. “We’re running!” replies the latter. Mekas repeats the question, as if he’s not quite sure. Then he pulls out a watch. “It’s a quarter to two, Saint Paul time. We should be finished by five minutes after two.” So begins Jonas Mekas’s Self Portrait from 1980. Despite the title, Mekas is not filming himself. A cameraman captures him standing in a garden in front of a friend’s cottage in Saint Paul, Minnesota, drinking a can of beer.

KIJKWATCH

Because We Are Visual

Olivia Rochette, Gerard-Jan Claes, Belgium, 2010, 47’

By means of visual material gathered from online sources, filmmakers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes create a unique poetic realm in which thoughts, fears, desires, and worries are shared via webcam, and merge together.