Luc de Heusch

Belgian filmmaker and social anthropologist Luc de Heusch (1927-2012) was a prominent figure both in art and academia. He was involved in several major movements in Europe’s intellectual landscape after the Second World War. As a filmmaker, he started out as an assistant to Henri Storck. In 1951, using the pseudonym Luc Zangrie, he directed Perséphone, the only film produced under the auspices of the artistic movement CoBrA. He went on to produce a series of films on major artists such as Pierre Alechinsky, Christian Dotremont, Reinhoud, James Ensor, René Magritte, Pierre Lahaut, and Michel de Ghelderode. With his friend Jean Rouch, de Heusch was a prominent advocate of visual anthropology, making several documentaries on various parts of Central and West Africa. His other films include Gestes du repas (1958), a film on eating habits in Belgium, Libre examen (1968), a film about the student revolt of the 1960s and Jeudi on chantera comme dimanche (1967), his only fiction film.