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World cinema, made in Belgium
Katrien Steyaert
A burning nomad tent in the middle of the Mongolian steppe, a horse with a piece of heaven around his neck, a girl buried under coal: these are the images that Khadak imprints on your retina. The film of K.U.Leuven-alumnus Peter Brosens (45) and his American wife Jessica Woodworth are accorded prizes and superlatives all over the world. At the festival of Venice, the film won the prize for debut feature film, the Golden Lion of the Future. Brosens’ immediate future is in Peru, where he will make his new film, Fragments of Grace.
“I began taking pictures when I was a boy,” says Brosens. “Later,
I made slideshows with an old Revox. When I saw Andrei Tarkovsky’s film
Stalker, I could not speak for a couple of days. I thought: “Wow –
I want to make films.” But parental concern prevented film and photography
studies. “‘First go to university, and then do what you want,’
was the story. I come from an academic family. My father is one of the pioneers
of in-vitro fertilization, and my grandfather also taught in the chemistry department.
I myself have, in the end, gather quite a collection of diplomas.”
Brosens first studied urban geography. “The human being in space interests
me more than what lies underground. But at the Faculty of Science, there is
no attention paid to ‘the why’ of human activity.” Logically,
a postgraduate degree in social and cultural anthropology was the next step.
“A complete revelation for me.”
Suicide epidemic
Meanwhile, Brosens peered at the world full of curiosity. “In the 1970s,
my parents built up a circle of friends with South American students. We rarely
travelled, but we went there twice. For a child, that’s incredibly far
and adventurous. Not coincidently, the research for my thesis was situated in
Lima, where I learned to speak a decent mouthful of Spanish on the streets.
Together with my rare combination of diplomas, that brought me to Guayaquil,
a town in Ecuador, where I carried out research for two years on rural migration.
After that, it was really time for film. But how in God’s name was I to
begin?”
A master’s degree in visual anthropology in Manchester was Brosens’
springboard. “Above all, I learned there how not to make films. They approach
cinema very narrowly there; it should register reality without the use of filmic
language.” The aspirant director sought his own way. “In Ecuador,
I read about the epidemic of suicides in some Andes villages. That intrigued
me enough to do my dissertation in that region. With a VHS camera, I made the
film shorts La Campana de Oro and El Camino del Tiempo.”
The latter circulated at festivals, and won a few prizes. “It is a registration,
in a special style, of something that happened by chance. An old man, who was
familiar with the oral history and myths of the area, arrived drunk at our meeting.
When he collapsed unconsciously after his performance in front of the camera,
nobody looked surprised. After all, the elders there have the privilege of drinking
until they fall down, because they are thought to be able to communicate with
the dead. Later, the Mongolians immediately understood these images from South
America. The shamanism in Khadak is similar. It is about a dimension that exists
beyond the three known dimensions. Interaction is possible between the visible
world and that of the spirits and ancestors. No, I do not believe in shamanism
myself, but instead in the people who believe in it. Otherwise, I could not
make Khadak.”
Pishtacos
Khadak tells the story of a young nomad Bagi, who wrestles with his shaman
calling. His grandfather warns that opposition to his paranormal gift will bring
misfortune. Then soldiers come to say that a serious epidemic has broken out
among the animals and they force the nomads to move to desolate mining towns.
There, Bagi saves the life of a beautiful coal thief, Zolzaya, and together
they discover that the epidemic was a lie, intended to bring an end to the nomadic
lifestyle … Brosens: “We actually discovered the actors, two students,
by chance. They are complete naturals. When the film is selected for a festival,
we send them. Bagi had not yet been outside of Mongolia. In Venice, for the
very first time he saw an airplane, a beach, an escalator - and Italian girls!”
Brosens is now completely occupied with the screenplay and casting for his next
film, Fragments of Grace. “After thirteen yeas in Mongolia, it is time
for something different. The new film, a Belgian-Peruvian story, brings me back
to suicide in the Andes. The revengeful type of suicide at its core carries
us back to US politics in South America, and how this has destroyed self-organization
and communities. The protagonist Saturnina commits suicide because her fiancé
is brutally murdered by pishtacos, alleged mercenaries whom are thought to steal
the good, human fat from the Indians. The people really believe that that is
the explanation for why their quality of life is falling while that of the rest
of the world is rising. Saturnina films her own suicide, and elaborately unfolds
her worldview. That is the way I look at the world: I try to contextualize an
occurrence, which is small when considered alone.”