a film by Sarah Vanagt
at
Demonstrations. Making Normative Orders
Frankfurter Kunstverein
20.01.2012 – 25.03.2012

Press preview: 19 January, 2012, 11:00 am
Opening: 19 January, 2012, 8:00 pm

The Corridor, 7min, 2010

For five days Sarah Vanagt and cinematographer Annemarie Lean-Vercoe followed a donkey during its weekly visits to old people in nursing homes in England. From home to home, from room to room. Time and again the donkey was welcomed with open arms, with songs, gentle strokes, childhood stories, poems, and laughter. It was only when the donkey entered the room of Norbert, a man who had lost his ability to speak, that an altogether different encounter took place..

Even though Vanagt initially followed the donkey‘s steps in search of reminiscences brought about by the animal’s mute presence, she came home with an altogether different film. While editing, the film became shorter and shorter, as if the words that had accompanied the donkey’s visits became a distraction. What is left is perhaps a bas-relief disguised as a painting, disguised as a film.

The donkey visits to residential homes are an initiative of The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, England.

Boulevard d’Ypres
Documentary, 65 min., 2010
colour, French, English, Dutch spoken

The Boulevard d’Ypres in Brussels, with its large and colourful Mediterranean stores, offers glimpses of the Tales of One Thousand and One Nights. Urban development is now driving out these shops selling couscous, dates and olives. It is this turning point in the history of her own street that Vanagt uses as a starting point for a “microhistorical experiment”. Vanagt turned one the already empty stores into a film studio, and invited her neighbours – a mix of new inhabitants, undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers, and shopkeepers – to come and tell a story, a fairy tale.

Her approach is inspired by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, one of the initiators of “microhistory”. This branch of history attempts to uncover power relations in society by focusing on details, and on the mental universes created by the men and women in the street. In Boulevard d’Ypres, the histories are ‘fictionalised’ by use of the third-person voice: ‘he’ replaces ‘I’. Thus, a mythical dimension is added, as if these tales are becoming part of an oral storytelling tradition. Before the street changes into something new, before the empty store turns into a restaurant, a fitness centre, or an art gallery, the old store-house temporarily functions as a place of memory. The shop, the street, and the storytellers all find themselves at a point zero of history.

Produced by Balthasar vzw in co-production with  Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Argos, Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles (CVB)
Supported by : Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF) & Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC)

2 DVD’s including the following films and video loops: Little Figures, History Lesson, Money Exchange, Resurrections, First Elections, Silent Elections, Boulevard d’Ypres, The Corridor and Baby Elephant + a  booklet with texts by Anke Bangma, Lars Kwakkenbos and Muriel Andrin.
Published by Balthasar, 2011.

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The DVD edition can be ordered by sending an email to: sarah@vanagt.com.
Price: 18 euro + delivery cost (1,5 euro for Belgium, 3,5 euro for Europe)

COURTISANE FILM FESTIVAL Gent

The 10th edition of the Courtisane Festival for film, video and media art closed on Sunday 3rd April 2011. At the award ceremony, the festival jury − Marina Kozul (HR, organiser/curator), Adam Pugh (UK, curator/writer/organiser) and Vincent Meessen (BE, visual artist/curator) − announced the Belgian and international winners. The prize for the best Belgian work was awarded to Brussels based filmmaker/visual artist Sarah Vanagt (°1976) for her latest video, The Corridor (2010). It’s the second time Sarah Vanagt is a Courtisane Festival laureate, in 2007 she won the Belgian competition with First Elections.

“We appreciated the film’s proposal to re-evaluate the relationship between humans and animals on a political level…In doing so, it questions notions of domesticity and humanity, bestiality and consciousness…”, stated the jury on the film.

Courtisane Film Festival, Gent, Belgium
Balthasar