Black Night

Mental anguish is all that's present in the film Seuls / Alone (1989). Shot like a grungy medical documentary, Smolders and co-director Thierry Knauff intercut shots of several children at a Belgium psychiatric clinic. The kids are shown with forlorn expressions, twicthing their eyes, sometimes smiling, shaking, jumping, rocking their heads side to side, or smacking their heads with horrific glee against walls. It's a minimalist work that captures the intense monotony of lost and disturbed young minds, and maintains a gritty intensity.

Based on the real life story of Sagawa, a Japanese student who killed, dismembered and ate a young Dutch girl in Paris.

A small, empty boudoir slowly becomes populated by a series of young women, their still and open expressions gradually engulfing the screen, as a nun narrates an account of religious rapture. Belgian filmmaker Olivier Smolders continues a brilliant exploration of religious ecstasy, figured in and epitomized by the erotic, death-defying gaze of the camera lens, in this sublime black-and-white treatment set to excerpts from the theological writings of Saint Teresa of Avila.

The camera slowly pans through a room as Smolders offers various observations and memories.

A young teacher is the victim of a cruel joke. When she enters the classroom, all her pupils are naked, standing near their bench. Their clothes are heaped up on the podium.

Reflections in a surrealist tone about the art of cinema.

L’art d’aimer / The Art of Loving (1985), another colour short, is probably the weakest of the ten films, mostly because it’s a blurry monologue (read by Smolders) from the perspective of a man confused about past events from his youth, and the fate of his mother. Smolder’s voice is deadly monotone, and the short drones on towards a climax set in an old age home, and a room filled with men and women suffering from diverse ailments, or seniors trapped in some darkened mental gloom. - kqek.com

Modest meditation on youth, life and mortality made up almost entirely from professionally made family films. What is more heart-rending than seeing pictures of people who have died? The aim of Mort à Vignole is to transcend the pain of a certain family and to come to terms with sensitive memories and family bonds.

A bereft filmmaker asks a series of women to pose nude for his camera in this striking and moody short film by Belgium's Olivier Smolders. The silent encounters act as counterpoint to a contemplative internal monologue musing on love, loss and the subtle power-plays of aversion and desire underway in an atmosphere pervaded by an irresistible erotic gloom. Filmed in a lustrous black and white, the themes explored find their perfect compliment in the stark, fascinated, all-embracing gaze of the camera. - Robert Avila

A man accepts a concierge job, which comes with a small apartment, in an old building and, locked inside his lodgings, undertakes a strange job of grieving. He discovers that behind the walls, a system of secret corridors allows tenants to be observed. But is it really the tenants that he is spying on?

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Some footage and shots of expressionless actresses seen in Ravissements are repurposed in La philosophie dans le boudoir / Philosophy in the Boudoir (1991), wherein Smolders takes extracts from the Marquis De Sade’s nutbar text and applies them to scenes of a man in a prison cell, and single or groups of women often standing with the same blank expressions as the man. Perhaps to characterize De Sade’s libertine philosophy and rude text as words and ideas worthy of anyone, Smolders alternates his actors, with several men portraying (presumably) the incarcerated De Sade.

A cinematographic “cadavre exquis”, whose entrails reveal the odd nature of a (un)certain Belgian cinema. Authors, directors, actors who have proved that imposture could be an act of creation. Convinced that any so-called “new” cinematographic production was in fact a rehash of what had already been made, these pirates of images snuck as forgers, liars, tricksters, usurpers, … Outlaws of the cinema who falsified its form. From the filmed imposture of Man Bites Dog to Jan Bucquoy’s fabulist biopic, everything participates in the dynamiting of institutional language through simulacrum and absurdity. This free journey in the “cine-belgitude” has for vocation to approach these marvellous eccentrics followers of a overexcited and stripping situationism.

At the end of the 18th century, Florentine artists recreated in wax the bodies laid bare by the surgeon’s scalpel. In a symmetrical gesture, this Little Anatomy dissects the images themselves, performing incisions, grafts, and mise en abyme. From this emerges a people of strange creatures.

Some David Lynch films revisited through plans by Bergman, Lang, Bunuel, Hitchcock, Fellini and a few others: didactic montage directed by Olivier Smolders on a proposal from the ART BLOW UP site, a the occasion of the broadcast of Twin Peaks.

After being separated for 15 years, the Sword of Power leads Prince Adam back to Eternia, where he discovers his home shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor. To save his family and his world, Adam must join forces with his closest allies, Teela and Duncan/Man-At-Arms, and embrace his true destiny as He-Man — the most powerful man in the universe.

Will Radford is a top analyst for Homeland Security who tracks potential threats through a mass surveillance program, until one day an attack by an unknown entity leads him to question whether the government is hiding something from him... and from the rest of the world.

A group of college friends' Thailand adventure turns deadly when they become trapped in submerged caves with a dangerous predator. As oxygen runs low, past conflicts emerge in their desperate fight for survival.

George Hardy is a shepherd who reads detective novels to his beloved sheep every night, assuming they can't possibly understand. But when a mysterious incident disrupts life on the farm, the sheep realize they must become the detectives. As they follow the clues and investigate human suspects, they prove that even sheep can be brilliant crime-solvers.

Estranged half-brothers Jonny and James reunite after their father's mysterious death. As they search for the truth, buried secrets reveal a conspiracy threatening to tear their family apart.

Noah must leave her city, boyfriend, and friends to move into William Leister's mansion, the flashy and wealthy husband of her mother Rafaela. As a proud and independent 17 year old, Noah resists living in a mansion surrounded by luxury. However, it is there where she meets Nick, her new stepbrother, and the clash of their strong personalities becomes evident from the very beginning.

Jack Ryan is reluctantly pulled back into espionage when an international covert mission unravels a deadly conspiracy. Racing against time, he joins CIA allies Mike November & James Greer and sharp MI6 officer Emma Marlowe to battle a rogue black-ops unit in a high-stakes, deeply personal fight.

When an elusive thief whose high-stakes heists unfold along the iconic 101 freeway in Los Angeles eyes the score of a lifetime, with hopes of this being his final job, his path collides with a disillusioned insurance broker who is facing her own crossroads. Determined to crack the case, a relentless detective closes in on the operation, raising the stakes even higher.

In future Rio de Janeiro, a young leader of the resistance must enter a deadly parkour-inspired competition in order to save his sister's life.

Jenna and Lion's wedding brings about the long-awaited reunion between Noah and Nick after their breakup. Nick's inability to forgive Noah stands as an insurmountable barrier. He, heir to his grandfather's businesses, and she, starting her professional life, resist fueling a flame that's still alive. But now that their paths have crossed again, will love be stronger than resentment?

The brutal murder of the wife of “Toro,” a military hero in the special forces, turns him into a man with a single purpose: revenge. After a stroke of fate makes him a millionaire, Carlos transforms his fortune into an arsenal and, together with his closest soldiers, sets out to hunt down those responsible.

The love between Noah and Nick seems unwavering despite their parents' attempts to separate them. But his job and her entry into college open up their lives to new relationships that will shake the foundations of both their relationship and the Leister family itself.

A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to "reconnect", but each has secret intentions to kill the other.

Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond.

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

Ex-UFC fighter Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.

Big rig ice road driver Mike McCann travels to Nepal to scatter his late brother’s ashes on Mt. Everest. While on a packed tour bus traversing the deadly 12,000 ft. terrain of the infamous Road to the Sky, McCann and his mountain guide encounter a group of mercenaries and must fight to save themselves, the busload of innocent travelers, and the local villagers’ homeland.

18-year-old Noah moves from America to London, with her mother who's recently fallen in love with William, a wealthy British businessman. Noah meets William’s son, bad-boy Nick, and soon discovers there is an attraction between them neither can avoid. As Noah spends the summer adjusting to her new life, her devastating past will catch up with her while falling in love for the first time.

A troupe of ballerinas find themselves fighting for survival as they attempt to escape from a remote inn after their bus breaks down on the way to a dance competition.

Nick and Noah are both embarking on life-changing adventures that are threatening to pull them apart—Nick in business with his father and Noah starting a fresh chapter at Oxford University. Now living separate lives, and meeting new people, they find themselves entangled in temptations, rivalries, and betrayals and their bond is tested like never before. As secrets unravel and temptation rises, they must fight to hold onto each other—or risk losing everything.