Ragnar Dan wrote:havanu: I think we'd all appreciate your explaining more about your short film. What the purpose of it is, where it will be released... and if there will be any way for those of us w/o the capacity to understand French to understand it (maybe a translated script or something?), that sort of thing. Any extra information you care to give would probably be of some interest.
Well, it's basically a short that critises our rather ambiguous stance towards our weapon production, and how many of these guns (often part of older stocks...) end up being sold to third world nations. How these weapons inflict massive damage on the population there, and how they are being used as a tool to control/enforce certain groups of people. How they dictate the outcome of certain conflicts, and how we, as a country, profit from this. (Belgium owned one of the biggest colony's (Congo). In fact it's about 75 times as big as Belgium itself.) Needles to say, the natural resources available made us filthy rich, and are making us a lot more money up 'till this day. Part of dealing with the local rebels is supplying them with weapons, and letting them fight their battles for us.
Thing is, I've always been fascinated by weapons. I like to look at them, hold them, shoot them. But the more I read about them, the more I got interested in the history of how a small country like Belgium became such a big player in the weaponbussiness.
I mean, government and law enforcement contracts I have no qualms with. But that's only part of the picture. So I started delving into the historybooks and newspaper articles. And finally I made this film about it.
This is the promo flyer:
I tried to keep it nuanced. The black man in my film is dangerous, and a killer. But he's also a victim of his upbringing, and is trying to make something out of his "new" life. The small boy is a bit of a spoiled brat. But you can feel that, more then anything, he just wants to be accepted. That he is not fully aware of his fathers' past, and even though he knows something is wrong, he'd rather bury his head in the sand then look up and face the music.
The short is funded by the Flemish governement. We have a long running feud with the French part of Belgium. (We speak Dutch...)
The only reason I could get this film made in french is because I won a "Wildcard", which was a fund granted to the two most succesful graduation shortfilms that year. And because of this I got "carte blanche", and could do whatever I wanted. And since most Congolese speak French, and FN is actually located in Herstal, which is part of French Belgium, French seemed like a logical choice for the main language.
Once the film is released, it will be subtittled in English. It will be shown in the festival circuit first, then hopefully find it's way onto the numerous shortfilm compilation DVD's out there. Finally, an internet release (Youtube maybe) will be possible as well. But that's only after the festivals have shown it. (They demand exclusivity...)
So there you go.
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