Film-concert based on Thomas More's Utopia

Baroque and utopia go hand in hand: the idea is to show an impossible work, to integrate something into reality that did not yet exist. In that sense, Antwerp has always been Baroque, from its Gothic cathedral to Georges Eekhoud’s utopian novels about Antwerp’s libertines. Or is the reality different? Graindelavoix has developed an alternative script for More’s Utopia in this bizarre film concert, which was largely filmed in Antwerp and in the Atlantic. An Antwerp premiere!

Björn Schmelzer about OUTLANDISH

"Two years have passed since Frédéric Mariage (of the Tournai festival “Les Inattendues” asked me to adapt Thomas More’s Utopia, after seeing CESENA, graindelavoix’s collab with Rosas and fragments of the film OSSUAIRES (in post-production). I agreed because to me it seemed like an impossible, utopian undertaking that would allow me to reduce cinema to its essence, to make the impossible possible. We worked on a shoestring budget, against time. We were given just nine days for this project. And that’s exactly what I wanted it to be: a pure utopia, compelling me to create something purely cinematographical. We already had a soundtrack, i.e., the “cinematographical polyphony” of Thomas More’s English contemporaries, Ashwell and Browne and a motet of the Portuguese humanist Damiao de Gois, who presided over the Antwerp Feitoria in More’s day.

Instead of creating a literal adaptation, Margarida Garcia and I stripped the book of its rhetoric, misrepresentations and attempted to work with just the rough material, a paradoxical core of every utopian project. Ultimately, we discovered a book that was teeming with absurdity, lies and humour, with slow-motion slapstick; a book that mercilessly deconstructed the limits, risks and paradoxes of each utopia beneath the surface. It gradually became clear that our protagonists should be allegorical figures, albeit in the style of Laurel and Hardy, in a film style that no longer exists, which still accepts a marriage between extreme naturalism and allegorical mannerism: the type of upbeat, funny cinema of yore, that did not psychologise, without today’s culture of emotions or social drama.

In our version, the Portuguese sailor Hythloday discovers strictly nothing and why should he? Instead he is a stowaway, a nobody, who tests hospitality, friendship and ownership. And in our case, Thomas More does not write a book.

Now everyone who shoots a film is aware of the most important taboo. Don’t shoot at sea. We decided this was our destiny. So we asked Koen Broos, with whom we have worked in the past, to be our cameraman and filmed the first part in the Atlantic, in harsh conditions and on stormy seas. We narrowly escaped drowning... Even the two elderly fishermen who steered our small boat were alarmed. We had hoped to film on an abandoned island off the Portuguese coast but it proved almost impossible to get the boat ashore because of the tall waves and the wind. The boat almost crashed into the quay.  Nobody was able to stay standing. What may have been a situation of total despair at first glance, however, provided the conditions for utopia, for creating this film… Perhaps despair is a state of being with unforeseen possibilities…”

OUTLANDISH

Film concert by graindelavoix, after Thomas More's Utopia. A film by Björn Schmelzer, Margarida Garcia, Koen Broos, Nuno Henriques, Alex Fostier, Bram Leys, Willem Van Vooren and Katrijn Degans starring Manuel Mota, Marius Peterson, Timothy Foubert, Bert Timmermans, Bregje Vivier and live performance by Anne-Kathryn Olsen, Carine Tinney, Razek François Bitar, Tomàs Maxé, Albert Riera, Andrés Miravete, Marius Peterson, Arnout Malfliet, Björn Schmelzer (cond.). Live sound, light and video technique: Alexandre Fostier, Koen Broos and Peter Quasters. Music of Damião de Góis, Thomas Ashewell and John Browne. Film in English with Dutch subtitles. In collaboration with Les rencontres Inattendues Doornik, City of Doornik, Hospital of Undersized Gestures Lisbon and with the support of the Flemish Community.

St. Charles Borromeo Church | 06-08.07.2018