Globes

A Sea Change takes its audience to the IBIS maritime boarding school in Ostende (Belgium). In buildings that look out towards the sea, boys from six to sixteen sleep, eat and play. They learn how to read the sea, sail with a fishing boat and help haul in the catch. In the classrooms, the impetuous sea is captured in maps. On sea maps, there are no storms and there is no time: the sea might seem timeless, but much is changing. The coast is permeated with nostalgia, as if the sea had turned its face to the past. Sooner or later the fishing fleet will disappear, together with many endangered species of fish. The fish auction hall in Ostende is in decay, the harbour coated in rust. Nonetheless, a new colour is appearing from beneath the peeling paint.

The wanderings of a retail trader, Jean-Simon, sketch the contours of a microcosmic informal economy in Congolese society. The financial urgency of everyday life is permeated by the political situation in Congo: a larger, more abstract urgency, which the diaspora experiences from a distance. The film finds itself somewhere in between these two imperatives, between here and somewhere else, the past and the present, small money and big money.

A majestic mountain range rises over a Norwegian town engulfed in darkness. The stormy sea laps at its shores. A thick snow is falling. The town’s inhabitants, almost motionless in their existence, are like creatures in hibernation. The camera’s static shots resembling photographs are woven together into an experimental documentary on life in Skaland.

In this short film, several dogs are being trained as patrol dogs. Their owners teach them the choreographies of police work: biting and letting go, following and staying, always on their owner's command. Longingly gazing upwards, the dogs seem intimately connected with their owners. They are tamed and domesticated; their life is directed by humans. At the same time they are always the elusive other. A gap divides humans and animals, and from the other side these dogs see us.

A poetic essay film on the colonial gaze and the magic lantern. This early type of image projector was used in Belgian colonial propaganda, showcasing the good works of the Church, State and industry. Lantern projections were an effective way of selling the colonial project to a somewhat reluctant Belgian public.