Charles Dekeukeleire was a Belgian film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

. He pioneered modern Belgian film with Henri Storck

Henri Storck

Henri Storck was a Belgian author, film-maker and documentarist.In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with Andre Thirifays and Pierre Vermeylen, he founded the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique...

. He was inspired by French avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 cinema, particularly the works of Germaine Dulac

Germaine Dulac

Germaine Dulac was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film...

.

Biography

Dekeukeleire was born in Ixelles and died in Werchter

Werchter

Werchter is a small village in Belgium, belonging to the municipality of Rotselaar. It is site of the festival Rock Werchter. The origin of the place name is unknown but it's thought to be a watername.It is the birthplace of painter Cornelius Van Leemputten....

. For his first film, Combat de Boxe, produced in 1927, Dekeukeleire staged a boxing match in his room based on a poem by Paul Werrie. Dekeukeleire recruited two professional boxers, one of which was the Belgian lightweight boxing champion. The abrupt changes of scale, the use of overprinting

Overprinting

Overprinting refers to the process of printing one colour on top of another in reprographics. This is closely linked to the reprographic technique of 'trapping'...

, and the use of very short shots alternating between the spectators and the fighters made this film unusually complex for the Twenties.

He returned to this idea the following year with his masterpiece, Impatience, which is close to futurism

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...

. When it premiered, Charles Dekeukeleire stated that the gaze of the spectators must adapt, to let itself slip along with the film to feel the fragments of various lengths. The desire for physical contact with the machine is at the base of this film. In this drama with four characters (the Mountain, the abstract Motorbike, the Woman and the Blocks), the mechanical body, that of the Motorbike is strongly associated with the female body, first clothed and then naked with leather. Dekeukeleire exchanges parts between the two characters, resulting in a suggestive motorbike-woman/woman-motorbike. These two characters, the Motorbike and the Woman, then enter into interaction with the abstracted Mountain and Blocks, as if the director intended analogies between humanity, the animal world, the vegetable world and the mechanical world.

In 1929, he filmed Histoire de détective

Histoire de Détective

Histoire de Détective is the third film by the Belgian director Charles Dekeukeleire. The 138-minute film belongs to Dekeukeleire's avant-garde period and exudes the influence of the different avant-garde strands in Europe...

, a surrealist inspiration. These first three avant-garde silent films made his name in cinematography.

His work then oscillated between documentaries and commissioned works. His work deals with race at times, for example in Terres brûlées (Burned Grounds, 1934), which chronicles an automobile journey through the Belgian Congo

Belgian Congo

The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...

.

Dekeukeleire made one hundred films in a career spanning four decades.

Writing career

Dekeukeleire published articles in reviews such as 7 Arts, Nouvelle Team, and The Latest News. He is also the author of two books: The Social Emotion and The Film and Thought, Extra Light, Brussels, 1947.

Films

1927

• Combat de boxe - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 7' 30".

1928

• Impatience - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 36'.

1929

• Histoire de détective
  Histoire de Détective
  Histoire de Détective is the third film by the Belgian director Charles Dekeukeleire. The 138-minute film belongs to Dekeukeleire's avant-garde period and exudes the influence of the different avant-garde strands in Europe...
  
   - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 49'.

1930

• Witte vlam - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 11'.
• Dixmude - 35 mm, black and white, silent.

1931

• Santé, notre droit - 35 mm, black and white, silent.
• Travailleurs! Ouvrez les yeux! - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 60'.

1932

• Visions de Lourdes - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 18'.

1934

• Terres brûlées - 35 mm, black and white, silent, 60'.

1936

• Open signalen'
• Symphonie florale
• De Wol

1937

• Het Kwade Oog / Le Mauvais oeil - 35 mm, black and white, sound, 74'.
• Het Albertkanaal
• Het Leder
• Processies en karnavals

1938

• Images du travail
• De Christelijke vakbeweging
• Thèmes d'inspiration
• Chanson de toile
  Chanson de toile
  The Chanson de toile was a genre of narrative Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères which flourished in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Some fifteen of them remain; five were written by Audefroi le Bastart, the others are anonymous...
  
  

1939

• La Conserve alimentaire
• Les Noirs évoluent
• L' Acier
• Stijl

1942

• Au service des prisonniers
• Entr'aide
• Secours d'hiver

1943

• Images de banque
• Nos enfants

1945

• L'Usine aux champs

1946

• Métamorphoses
• La Vie recommence

1947

• Maisons
• Féerie
  Féérie
  Féerie is the title of the resident stage show at the Moulin Rouge, a famous cabaret venue in Paris, France. The show premiered on 23 December 1999. It replaced the Moulin Rouge's centenary show Formidable, which ran from 20 February 1988, to 14 November 1999...
  
  
• Le Fondateur

1948

• Diamant
• Le Trouble-fête
• Images de la création
• In het land van Thijl Uilenspiegel
• Prends garde
• Les Pères
• Les Usines de ACEC

1949

• 21 juillet
• Le Capiage
• L'Espace d'une vie
• Neuf cents hommes
• Au-delà des saisons

1950

• Clôtures
• Métiers d'art de Flandres et de Wallonie
• Nocturne
• Notre grand patron
• Les Polders

1951

• Une question de gros sous
• Beauté, mon souci
• Voyage au pays du rail
• L' Homme à la ville
• La Banque de Bruxelles

1952

• Bloemen
• Danse en forme de poudrier
• Les Expériences du professeur Michotte
• Faire farce
• Hainaut, terre tenue des dieux et du soleil
• Installations pétrollières à Anvers
• Luchtmacht
• Chausseur, sachez chausser

1953

• L'Abbaye de Maredsous - Made for TV
• Humor in hout - Made for TV

1954

• Noblesse du bois
• L'Alerte
• Le Petit nuage/La chasse au nuage/Le nuage atomique

1955

• Trois villes d'eau belges
• Fil d'acier
• Vers un monde nouveau

1956

• Een Kermishoedje - Made for TV

• Het Museum voor folklore - Made for TV

1957

• Charles-Quint: destin d'un empire 1 - TV Series

1958

• Charles-Quint: destin d'un empire 2 - TV Series
• Kiemen van het licht

1958

• Thèmes d'inspiration - 35 mm., black and white, 9'.

1962

• Poëzie in 625 lijnen - TV Series

External links

• http://www.davidbordwell.org/essays/dekeukeleire.php