Seuls

Belgium

1989

12 Min

Black and White

French

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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DIR Thierry Knauff, Olivier Smolders

DP Thierry Knauff, Olivier Smolders

ED Thierry Knauff, Olivier Smolders

SOUND Bruno Tarrière

Synopsis

Seuls (1989), a 12-min “documentary” on children at a Belgian psychiatric clinic. An experience of mental agony, the little children are shown with abnormal expressions – banging themselves onto walls, shaking their heads from side to side, repeated uncontrolled behaviors. The film doesn’t have a plot/narrator, but the close-ups of their gazes intensely enough to depict the realm of disturbed little people. —harmony-korine.com

Director

Olivier Smolders

Born in 1956 in Léopoldville (former Belgian Congo), Olivier Smolders completed his studies in Belgium. A graduate in Roman Philology (UCL) and lecturer at the University of Liège, he also teaches at INSAS (the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle), the Brussels film school. He has written and produced his own short films via his own production company, Les Films du Scarabée.

He is currently one of the most innovative figures in cinematic – particularly Belgian, but also experimental – circles. The author of various books on literature and the cinema, he has also written numerous articles that have been published in different journals and magazines. His work as filmmaker, sustained by his background in literature, confronts text with image in a way that that challenges our perceptions. Cultivating all kinds of discrepancy, his films, dosed with derision, have about them a whiff of the “fantasy film”, in which domain Nuit Noire, his first full-length feature, would… read more