Visions of Lourdes

Visions de Lourdes

Belgium

1932

17 Min

Black and White

Silent

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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Charles Dekeukeleire, a questioning Catholic, is spurred into making this documentary by a pilgrimage undertaken by the Catholic Young Workers’ Movement. The director’s approach is one of critical reflection – emotional and fervent, often acerbic – on the site of the most crystal-clear credulities and beliefs of all. Processions of pilgrims brush past artful bigots and candle sellers; water pours down in all its forms like the strings of rosary beads sold at the display stands; the sick, patiently awaiting the miracle, are cut against images of the gifts to the Holy Virgin (hieratic crutches suspended in their hundreds inside the Sacred Grotto, letters imprisoned by the thousand in metal grilles open to our view and the incredible sight of a floor strewn with leather corsets and wooden legs). —cinematek.be

Director

Charles Dekeukeleire

Charles Dekeukeleire (27 February 1905 – 2 June 1971) was a Belgian film director. He pioneered modern Belgian film with Henri Storck. He was inspired by French avant-garde cinema, particularly the works of Germaine Dulac.

Dekeukeleire was born in Ixelles and died in Werchter. For his first film, Combat de Boxe, produced in 1927, Dekeukeleire staged a boxing match in his room based on a poem by Paul Werrie. Dekeukeleire recruited two professional boxers, one of which was the Belgian lightweight boxing champion. The abrupt changes of scale, the use of overprinting, and the use of very short shots alternating between the spectators and the fighters made this film unusually complex for the Twenties.

He returned to this idea the following year with his masterpiece, Impatience, which is close to futurism. When it premiered, Charles Dekeukeleire stated that the gaze of the spectators must adapt, to let itself slip along with the film to feel the fragments of various lengths… read more

Charles Dekeukeleire (27 February 1905 – 2 June 1971) was a Belgian film director. He pioneered modern Belgian film with Henri Storck. He was inspired by French avant-garde cinema, particularly the works of Germaine Dulac.

Dekeukeleire was born in Ixelles and died in Werchter. For his first film, Combat de Boxe, produced in 1927, Dekeukeleire staged a boxing match in his room based on a poem by Paul Werrie. Dekeukeleire recruited two professional boxers, one of which was the Belgian lightweight boxing champion. The abrupt changes of scale, the use of overprinting, and the use of very short shots alternating between the spectators and the fighters made this film unusually complex for the Twenties.

He returned to this idea the following year with his masterpiece, Impatience, which is close to futurism. When it premiered, Charles Dekeukeleire stated that the gaze of the spectators must adapt, to let itself slip along with the film to feel the fragments of various lengths. The desire for physical contact with the machine is at the base of this film. In this drama with four characters (the Mountain, the abstract Motorbike, the Woman and the Blocks), the mechanical body, that of the Motorbike is strongly associated with the female body, first clothed and then naked with leather. Dekeukeleire exchanges parts between the two characters, resulting in a suggestive motorbike-woman/woman-motorbike. These two characters, the Motorbike and the Woman, then enter into interaction with the abstracted Mountain and Blocks, as if the director intended analogies between humanity, the animal world, the vegetable world and the mechanical world.

In 1929, he filmed Histoire de détective, a surrealist inspiration. These first three avant-garde silent films made his name in cinematography.

His work then oscillated between documentaries and commissioned works.

His work deals with race at times, for example in Terres brûlées (Burned Grounds, 1934), which chronicles an automobile journey through the Belgian Congo.

Dekeukeleire made one hundred films in a career spanning four decades. —Wikipedia

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