Boris Lehman
Magnum Begynasium Bruxellense
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1978
Language(s) French
Artist(s) Boris Lehman
Subtitles English
Running time 145 min
Films
MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (1978) 145'
Description
A living chronicle of the inhabitants of the Béguinage district—so named because it is located on the site of the former béguinage of Brussels. Conceived as an encyclopedic inventory, the film is composed of around thirty chapters interlocking like pieces of a puzzle, or like a termite mound with its numerous intersecting galleries. It unfolds in space and in the interstices of a single day, beginning at dawn and ending at night.
— Boris Lehman
"Boris Lehman, friend of Chantal Akerman, readily defines himself as an experimental filmmaker. He states that he sometimes uses cinema as a therapeutic tool at le Club Antonin Artaud, a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill, where he works. The reference, more than modern documentary, is collage, the juxtaposition of around thirty autonomous chapters, organized around a poor district of Brussels and spanning approximately one day. Boris Lehman has collected microscopic observation, quirky details, the search for atmosphere. He speaks as an entomologist of a familiar world reduced to a series of small touches, fleeting impressions. The author, the filmmaker, paradoxically becomes the center of the world: perhaps his film should be received as a kind of diary."
— Louis Marcorelles, Le Monde