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Part of Open City Documentary Festival 2021: Hamedine Kane’s portrait of an artist living in the Calais Jungle is followed by Sílvia das Fadas’ travelogue across sites of revolutionary outsider architecture.
The Blue House
Hamedine Kane | 2020 | Belgium | 55’
Senegalese-Mauritian filmmaker Hamedine Kane’s The Blue House is an intimately observed portrait of Alpha, a charismatic artist living and working in exile in the Calais Jungle. Alpha transformed his self-built cabin into a living artwork: an evolving sculpture made from water bottles, plastic chairs and cassette tapes discarded around the camp.
The Blue House on The Hill soon attracts the attention of the international art world as dealers and gallerists travel to the Jungle in increasing numbers, in the hope of acquiring it for exhibition. Amidst the rising clamour, Alpha and Kane share stories of their homeland and continue to make their art – the sculpture and film together constituting a shared space for poetic expression and resistance.
The House is Yet to Be Built
Sílvia das Fadas | 2018 | Portugal, Austria, USA | 35’
Sílvia das Fadas traces a journey between five sites of revolutionary outsider architecture: an ideal palace built by a postman after each of his daily rounds; a red house designed by a socialist agitator; a pacifist tower erected against the movements of History; an exuberant garden engendered in the feminine; and a merry cemetery, which conjures a community of equals in the outskirts of Europe. A travelogue to places which defy the surface of the world.
In partnership with Wallonia-Brussels International
