Niels Putman | Kortfilm.be

KIJKWATCH

Mathijs Poppe, Belgium, Lebanon, 2017, 42’

Filmed in Shatila, a refugee camp built in Lebanon when thousands of Palestinians fled their country in 1948. At an undetermined moment in the future, the refugees’ dream of returning to Palestine becomes a reality.

© White Cloud / 白云 (Emmanuel Van der Auwera, 2023)

Spotlight

Mon, 07/28/2025 - 17:19

White Clouds in a Dark Age

On Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s White Cloud / 白云

In this so-called post-truth era, the line between fact and fiction has blurred into a matter of style: what appears plausible is accepted as real. The rise of generative artificial intelligence has not merely accelerated this disintegration but formalised it. Truth is no longer something to be discovered, but something to be produced. Within this context, White Cloud / 白云 by Emmanuel Van der Auwera functions as a case study of the destabilisation of truth, image, and representation.

KIJKWATCH

La Chute

Sebastian Schaevers, Belgium, 2022, 22’

Zinal, a small town in the Swiss Alps, looks straight up toward the melting glaciers of the Couronne Impériale. The townspeople struggle with nihilistic indifference. When the threat is so immediate, and their powerlessness so great, can their response be anything other than cynicism? Then a paraglider falls mysteriously from the sky, and Zinal starts to change.

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

Old Child

Elettra Bisogno, Hazem Alqaddi, Belgium, Palestine, 2019, 16’

Old Child depicts the fragmented story of Hazem, who had to flee Gaza. Throughout this stream-of-consciousness montage of dreams and reminiscences, he searches for order but also for the beauty he left behind.

Spotlight

Mon, 03/17/2025 - 14:33

Life Begins Right Here, Right Now

On I’m Hungry, I’m Cold by Chantal Akerman

Henri Bergson believed that the phenomenon called humour arises when the material world falls short of our spiritual aspirations. Had he lived long enough to savour Chantal Akerman’s work, he could have found proof for his thesis. Not only was Akerman a gifted metteuse en scene of Chaplinesque slapstick, but how she depicted romantic love was also a source of uncontrollable chuckling, thanks to this gap between wishful dreaming and all-too-human reality.

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.

KIJKWATCH

Carnations

Martijn Van de Wiele, Belgium, 2021, 16’

An artificial summer rules the greenhouse. Workers tend to carnations. In a multitude of splendid colours, they grow towards the sun until they’re ready to fulfill their cut-flower destiny. Carnations is an audiovisual meditation on movements within a carnation nursery close to filmmaker Martijn van de Wiele’s home.

KIJKWATCH

Da-Dzma

Jaro Minne, Georgia, Belgium, 2019, 16’

Winter. A fifteen-year-old girl in a remote Georgian town tries to get closer to her older brother just as he decides to leave home in search of work abroad.

KIJKWATCH

Mars, Oman

Vanessa del Campo, Belgium, 2019, 20’

Oman’s vast plains look so much like Mars that they are used as a training ground for astronauts. Two local girls gaze at the starry sky like curious scientists while the astronauts philosophise about living on the Red Planet.