12.02.25, Universal Soldier (1992)

Lebanese journalist and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab is known for her politically engaged films, which she made during a career spanning from the 1970s until her death in 2019. With more than forty titles to her name, Saab brought the untold stories of the Arab world to the screen and gave a voice to marginalised and oppressed communities. During this evening, we revisit her combative yet nuanced oeuvre with two of her most powerful achievements.

In the short film Palestinian Women (1974), Palestinian women resist the Israeli occupation of their land through education and armed resistance. With Letter From Beirut (1978), Saab returns to Lebanon, where she directs herself in a poetic narrative that questions the creeping continuation of the conflict. She then leaves for South Lebanon, which is occupied by Israel. There, for the first time since the start of the civil war, she documents the Palestinian resistance at the border.

This evening takes place in the context of the book Jocelyne Saab: Inventory 1973–1983 (2024), about the rise of left-wing political movements, armed revolutions and public struggle in the Arab world. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with authors Mohanad Yaqubi, Mathilde Rouxel and Elettra Bisogno.

On New Year's Eve 1980, Youssef from Tunisia takes a ferry from Ostend to Dover. However, as he enters the new year in the middle of the English Channel, his visa expires. At the mercy of the administrative inflexibility of nation states, he finds himself in an impossible situation. Without a valid passport, he is refused entry by both British and Belgian border guards and is doomed to remain adrift between the two nations.

This long-lost gem of a film by Tunisian filmmaker Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud is one of the more eccentric treasures of Belgian film history. With Kafkaesque wit and psychological sensitivity, Mahmoud questions the absurdities of national borders. The result is a poetic parable that, 30 years later, also turns out to be a prophetic nightmare. While Youssef plots his escape, the threat of right-wing nationalists looms over the interior and the walls of Fortress Europe are further fortified. Borders seem to slowly multiply to almost metaphysical proportions.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud.

Traversées (Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud, 1983, Belgium-France-Tunisia, 91’).

At 18:00 there will be a screening for students, followed by a second screening for the general public at 20:30, without a lecture. Tickets for the first screening can be found here, while tickets for the 20:30 screening will be available online in January.

All hands on deck, KASKcinema and Studium Generale are shipmates for this special screening of Traversées. On New Year's Eve 1980, Tunisian Youssef takes a ferry trip from Ostend to Dover. However, as he enters the new year in the middle of the English Channel, his visa expires. At the mercy of the administrative inflexibility of nation states, he finds himself in an impossible situation. Without a valid passport, he is refused entry by both British and Belgian border guards and is doomed to remain adrift between the two nations.

This long-lost gem of a film by Tunisian filmmaker Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud is one of the more eccentric treasures of Belgian film history. With Kafkaesque wit and psychological sensitivity, Mahmoud questions the absurdities of national borders. The result is a poetic parable that, 30 years later, also turns out to be a prophetic nightmare. While Youssef plots his escape, the threat of right-wing nationalists looms over the interior and the walls of Fortress Europe are further fortified. Borders seem to slowly multiply to almost metaphysical proportions.

Prior to this screening, film scholar Lennart Soberon will give an introduction on the representation of border landscapes. Although we easily recognise classic border iconography such as checkpoints and fences, modern borderscapes are characterised by their opaque nature. In order to identify state violence, we must also be aware of the administrative, digital and emotional barriers through which power reproduces itself.

• Lennart Soberon is a researcher in film studies (VUB) and artistic coordinator at KASKcinema. As part of the Reel Borders project, he works on the cinematic representation of national borders.
  

This lecture and film screening will take place at KASKcinema. There is ongoing work in the street near KASKcinema, but it is possible to drive up to the entrance at Godshuizenlaan 4. The venue is accessible to wheelchair users and a limited number of spaces are available in the auditorium. The toilet for wheelchair users is located on the first floor and is accessible by lift (90 cm wide, 1 m 35 deep). There is another toilet available further down the corridor past the KASKcafe for those who use a wider wheelchair. A written version of the introduction will be provided. The introduction is in Dutch. The film itself is in several languages and subtitled in English. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be.

A newlywed couple, a deckhand, a seasoned sailor and his cats in heat. Together they cram into the stuffy cabins of a riverboat that glides lazily through the French waterways. As tensions rise and eroticism gently simmers, the outside world beckons seductively from the shore.

But the ship of fools stubbornly sails on through fog and drizzle, past deserted warehouses and banks that whisper rather than speak.

L'Atalante feels like a daydream that you can't quite place and ‘smells like dirty feet,’ according to François Truffaut. In Jean Vigo's only feature film, social criticism, sensual lyricism and playful surrealism flow effortlessly into one another. Vigo, son of a notorious anarchist, left behind a film that defies categorisation and was lovingly picked up by the Nouvelle Vague after his early death. Even today, L'Atalante's influence continues to resonate with superfan Leos Carax, among others. Immerse yourself in this damp cabin allegory and discover why Vigo is called “the embodiment of cinema”.

This screening is linked to the launch of the book Barge Life (2024), a philosophical exposition of L'Atalante, and will be introduced by author Florian Deroo.

Floating freely through the clouds, a bird has much to realize.

Cinema for the youngest cinema-goers! Parents and children aged 4 and above are welcome to this screening, where we present a varied and original series of short films.

Everyone's favourite animation festival (Anima!) is back again, this time with a programme bursting with new talent. This selection of short films provides a platform for the next generation of European filmmakers whose imagination knows no bounds. In this programme, they effortlessly combine stories about snowed-in houses, unbreakable eggs, shoes that move to music on their own, and cups of tea that get lost in a magical universe. Using various innovative techniques within the medium of animation, they explore unknown worlds that will inspire dreams for a long time to come. Discover the films of these young pioneers, whom you will undoubtedly hear more about in the future.

The Weird Wednesday family continues to expand. This time, we welcome the strange friends from Cinema Obscura: a cult film collective that sees high art in bad taste. With a range of screenings that honour the craftsmanship of low-budget filmmaking, they help us search for gold nuggets in the rubbish heap. The manic Miami Connection is our first collaboration and serves as living proof of the B-movie quip “so bad it's good”.

In the neon-drenched Miami of the 1980s, we follow the band Dragon Sound. These five musicians and taekwondo fighters firmly believe that friendship conquers all, even rival bands, drug dealers and ninjas on motorbikes. When a cocaine deal goes wrong, everything derails into a battle full of clumsily choreographed fight moves, awkward silences and intimate synth-rock anthems about brotherhood. Miami Connection may be a terrible film, but the sincerity behind its making is disarming. Nothing about the film is meant to be ironic, as director and lead actor Y.K. Kim clearly thought he had an unrivalled action epic on his hands.

Unfortunately, those dreams were shattered and the film (understandably) slipped by unnoticed upon its release. Now the world is finally ready for this fiery ode to action cinema and friendship.

Delve into the mind of Federico Fellini. With seven feature films to his name, including La Strada (1954) and La Dolce Vita (1960), and a handful of short films, the Italian filmmaker embarked on what would aptly be called 8½. Otto e mezzo follows the seemingly chaotic stream of consciousness of film director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), whose creative reservoir has run dry. His wife and mistress each pull at one of his arms, while an impatient producer, cunning critics and desperate actresses cheerfully nibble away at his already scarce time. But remember: when reality becomes too stifling, even a crack in a car window can suddenly feel like salvation.

Anselmi (read: Fellini himself) decides to simply make his lack of inspiration his subject matter and thus conjures up an irresistible “film about film” out of thin air. In this wild, typically Fellinian introspection, dream and reality are constantly intertwined, a gamble that was rewarded with two Oscars in 1964 and is considered one of the maestro's best works. Bravo, Federico!

With titles such as The Quiet Girl (2022) and Small Things Like These (2024), it is clear that Irish cinema is flourishing. However, amid the arthouse capital of hit films, the undercurrent of smaller genre films is often forgotten. Fréwaka shows that Irish horror cinema is also alive and kicking. After enduring a personal tragedy, caregiver Shoo decides to leave her pregnant partner alone to take care of an old woman in the countryside. However, as folk horror conventions dictate, there is something not quite right with the local community. On top of her paranoia about her neighbours, the old woman is consumed by superstition about the mythical na sídhe, a supernatural people who are said to have once abducted her.

Delving into Irish history and culture, Fréwaka is a surreal atmospheric piece with both feet firmly on the ground. Slowly, Shoo slips into her patient's delusions and the wounds of the past. Elegant scares are interspersed with a tactful approach to the post-colonial traumas that continue to plague the country. The attention to the Irish language further underlines a commitment to ground the film in a political project that seeks to heal the many horrors of reality through magical stories.

This screening will be preceded by the short film Cold Bathroom (2025) by Eleni Aerts.

In this eccentric musical film, Berlin is a stage and getting lost is an art of living. For his eccentric document of the times, Rosa von Praunheim invited a handful of glorious misfits to his home, the Stardust guesthouse, where he had them sing, seduce and stumble. This colourful community of trans performers, singers, dancers and outsiders play all kinds of roles, but above all themselves. Anything goes, nothing needs to be smoothed over.

The film feels like a night that goes on just a little too long. A revue without wings, a glitter show that undermines any idea of “role”. Cinema with a healthy disregard for good taste. Kitsch flirts with sincerity, camp with melancholy.

Von Praunheim, who passed away last December, was a key voice in German gay cinema. With a loving yet brutal gaze, he films people who live without excuses and without a safety net. ‘I am interested in the fragile, the spontaneous, the warm-hearted in them,’ says the filmmaker himself. Stadt der Verlorenen Seelen is now a cult classic and reads today as a legacy for a community that is reinventing itself on the margins, and shining there.