Hoe maak je een interessante en originele documentaire over Brussel? Hoe verken je de identiteit van een stad waar 70% van de mensen van elders komen en samenleven? En hoe vieren we dit? Filmmaker Maria Tarantino laat zich inspireren door de film ‘Amsterdam Global Village’ van Johan Van Der Keuken (NL), en gaat in dialoog met het publiek. Ze wil het met u hebben over haar vragen aan de hand van onderzoeksmateriaal voor haar filmproject over Brussel.

Meer info: Blog Au Boulot

In samenwerking met  Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren 

AU BOULOT: Het is tijd om te dromen! is a film project about Brussels.

Maria Tarantino:
“The idea is to share some of the research/thoughts/materials I have collected so far in the form a PUBLIC SESSION or conversation with....the public!

There are two questions I would like to discuss together with Prof. Eric Corijn:
1.    Is there an aesthetics of Brussels that reflects Brussels urban condition?
2.    How can one explore the territory of the city and how can one let it speak up?

Background:

A film about Brussels. Why?
Because this strange city, at once capital of Belgium and of Europe, at once very rich and very poor, generally ugly, full of people who speak different languages and who don’t always understand each other, well, this city needs a portrait.

Why a portrait? 
Because a film-portrait can interpret the specific urban condition of Brussels and restitute it in the form of a tale or as an organized sequence of images. 
It can capture moments of reality and re-organize them in a new way. In this sense, the composition of a film creates an overall image that did not exist before. 

What kind of portrait?
Cities are complex structures. They are naturally heterogeneous and unstable.
One can think of a city as a large container full of very different things (buildings, people, activities). 
I am interested in the specific urban condition of Brussels as a city of foreigners and a place of immigration. It is from this perspective that I consider the factors (economic, social, political) shaping the profile/atmosphere/flavor of the city. 
Why immigration? Because immigration (or being foreign) is a key factor of all times and even more so of our times of global politics and economics, where the movement of people which we call “mobility” tends to make us forget about the various forms of forced displacement. This is why I refuse the artificial distinction between the expat and the immigrant and reclaim the latter as the blueprint of today’s existential condition.

I am not interested in the history of immigration but in its present condition and future challenges. For me “being an immigrant” is about being suspended between two or more worlds and not really belonging to any of them. It is the impossibility to coincide and to feel fully at home in one place or one culture. It has to do with transition, transitory solutions, precarious living conditions. But also with a capacity to partly coincide with different things, of seeing things from a distance, of interpreting the concerns of different sides.  
In this sense the immigrant is also a “medium”, a bridge between distant worlds. And Brussels, as a city of immigrants, is also a city of floating images, images/memories/desires that refer to a distant land and that exist as an invisible reservoir for the imagination. It is this reservoir, this atmosphere, that I want to explore with “Au Bolout”. 
And this is why I would like to construct a documentary that veers toward a poetic exploration of the real."