The Amateur

L'amateur

Belgium

1996

26 Min

Black and White

French

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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CAST Yves Degen, Cathy Grosjean, Eric Pauwels, Mélanie Rullier

L’amateur / The Amateur (1997) deals with an amateur photographer’s quest to catalogue nude women on film, while simultaneously capturing their vulnerabilities, self-loathing, pride, and contempt for the photographer, often seen setting up the corner where the women will pose, or placing objects in front of the camera as symbols linking himself to whatever theme or personality he’s hoping to test. The subjects range from college age girls to elderly and utterly ordinary women, a married woman, and a temptress. —kqek.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