Robin Vanbesien - Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016) - Avant-première

Robin Vanbesien - Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016) - Avant-première

Screening - Wednesday 26.04, 20:30 - Beursschouwburg

In his documentary fiction film, the Belgian artist Robin Vanbesien follows three actors on a journey through Athens. They seek to listen to fellow-citizens engaged in different organisations of the grassroots solidarity movement (a clinic, a pharmacy, a kitchen, a school). In the course of many conversations, the social imaginary of the citizens unfolds as a living continuity.

Avant-première on Wednesday, April 26, 20:30, Beursschouwburg, A. Ortsstraat 20-28, 1000 Brussels - info & tickets 

Robin Vanbesien on Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016):
“I went to Athens with the idea of staging the story of Oresteia – the part in which furies become the guardians of a newly established justice – with theater actors and citizens involved in the solidarity movement. In the encounter with the Athinians, the idea of superposing an allegorical fiction of the ancient Greek tragedy upon the social present of Athens 2016 crumbled. The actors fell silent and withdrew into the role of listeners to the practical consciousness of the citizens, or what is being lived through organizing a society parallel to the Greek state. Suddenly, a gap opened between the received interpretaton of ‘crisis’ and ‘solidarity’ and the practical experience of these words. While a representative portrait of a social movement seemed inadequate, something else entered into focus, a particular quality of social experience and relationships that couldn’t be described in formal concepts of worldview and ideology. Perhaps the closest term for this is Raymond Williams’ ‘structures of feeling’: a kind of feeling and thinking that is social and material, thoughts as felt and feelings as thought from the known complexities and uncertainties, forms of confusion and unease.”

HD, color, 4:3, stereo, English & Greek spoken, English subtitled, BE, 2017, 50’

A film by Robin Vanbesien I With Evi Saoulidou, Christos Passalis, Bryana Fritz I And with (in order of appearance) Panagiotis Economides, Christos Sideris, Christina Papadopoulos, Christos Giovanopoulos, Georgia Bekridaki, Christos Korolis, Kaiti Mendoni, Konstantinos Theofilopoulos, Katharina Papagika, Martha Frangiadaki, Petros Boteas, Dina Papadimitriou, Pinelopi Barberi, Aleka Papavassiliou, Dora Ziaka, Tasos Kanoulas, Alexia Papa, Kostas Tromaridis, Pavlos Meogiatzis, Alexandros Lykos, Chris Maurantzas, Stella Andriana, Kostas Karras, Eleni Sotiropoulou, Kostas Brillakis, Irene Papageorgiou, Katy Davakou, Themistoklis Kolivas I Director of photography Hans Bruch Jr. 2nd camera Yannis Drakoulidis I Sound Laszlo Umbreit I Editing Robin Vanbesien I Outside Eyes Inneke Van Wayenberghe, Effi Weiss, Amir Borenstein I Sound editing Iannis Heaulme Sound I mixing Rémi Gerard at Empire Digital I Music Choir Polyphonic Kafeneio I Color correction Florian Keirse I Translation Aimilena Vourliotaki I Title design Goda Budvytyte

Production Timely I Co-production Beursschouwburg I Supported by Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC), WIELS, Sarma, workspacebrussels, STUK

About Beursschouwburg

Beursschouwburg is a multidisciplinary center for arts and reflection, an open meeting place strongly anchored in Brussels’ reality. Here we embrace the local, the global and the glocal. 

Beursschouwburg functions as a platform to present and develop a wide array of art practices and research, as a  support and experimentation network for artists, collectives and thinkers; a hub that questions normativity and welcomes new narratives.

Together with collaborators, we co-create programs that ignite fruitful encounters between different audiences, forms and genres, between art and everyday life, between the emerging and the established, between urgency and joy.

Beursschouwburg
Auguste Ortsstraat 20-28
1000 Brussel