Movie makers: Three directors' experiences of producing a film in Belgium

In 1836, Joseph Plateau, a Belgian professor of experimental physics at Ghent University, invented the Phenakistiscope, a stroboscopic device that when operated created the illusion of movement of images.

The projection of stroboscopic photographs led to the development of cinema and the cinématographe of the Lumière Brothers. The first public projection of a film in Belgium took place in the Saint Hubert Royal Galleries in 1896. The first Belgian film producer, Hippolyte De Kempeneer, produced a number of films until his studio burned down in 1923.

So we can affirm that Belgian cinema has a long history. But what does it take to make a film in Belgium today? The Bulletin asked the creators of three current projects to share their experiences.

Jessica Woodworth: 'It's a huge luxury to be in Belgium'

Belgian Peter Brosens and American Jessica Woodworth are the writers, directors and producers of King of the Belgians, a film currently playing in cinemas that has made quite a splash. Born in Washington DC but raised mostly in Belgium and Switzerland, Woodworth met Brosens in Mongolia where they were both working on separate documentaries. Since then they married and have worked together on four fiction feature films while living for a decade in southern Namur Province and now in Ghent.

Their first three films - shot in Mongolia, Peru and Belgium - are concerned with damage to the environment. King of the Belgians on the other hand is a comedy. "It's a mockumentary road movie about a very fictional Flemish monarch who gets himself embroiled in an odyssey of epic dimensions across the Balkans," says Woodworth.

How did this change of genre affect the financing and distribution of the film? "In the beginning we had trouble convincing the financiers and eventually the distributors that we were capable of pulling this off," she says. "The market is by nature conservative and risk averse which is a reality we face, but we have a luxury here in Belgium of being able to mount complex co-productions, modest budgets that are in the spirit of contributing to the arts.

"There is a kind of meritocracy, if you can deliver a solid file you do have a solid chance of getting your keystone financing in place here in Belgium so it's a huge luxury to be in Belgium."

They decided to distribute the film themselves and were buoyed by the reaction at its launch at the Venice Film Festival in September: "We had this extraordinary reception there, an ovation, we were all so relieved because we didn't even know if we had a comedy in hand. You don't know until you face your public for the first time, so we had 1,400 people on their feet, thrilled. It was immediately bought by Japan, Turkey, Spain and Italy."

Woodworth says festivals are of crucial importance: "Without the the festivals we would be in despair, that's how we reach most people, it's a kind of parallel distribution service and it provides the satisfaction of reaching very diverse audiences, from Pusan to Sao Paulo to Dubai - it's such a pleasure to talk to audiences and hear their questions."

Laurier Fourniau: 'We embraced the fact we didn't have much money'

Laurier Fourniau is a French film director, writer and editor based in Brussels whose first feature film, Low Notes, is a Belgian movie shot entirely in English in Los Angeles. The movie concerns a young man, Leon, who has left his native East Coast for Los Angeles in the aftermath of a breakup and who is building a new life in a new city with, as only anchor, his obsession with the cello.

Fourniau has managed a coup: a movie with excellent production values made with a practically non-existent budget. How did he accomplish this? "I had just worked on a documentary so it didn't seem crazy to work with a very small crew, a sound person and a couple of others. When you start a long process of making a movie, you know the budget will determine the process and to a certain point the aesthetics of your film, and I knew that I had to make this film now and not wait five years for financing so we just embraced the fact that we didn't have much money."

Serendipity also played a part. Fourniau got access to some lovely locations: "There's a German character in the film who is an actual German whom I met totally randomly on the bus in Hollywood. And he decided to help and provided some locations."

Multi-tasking was essential. "I had to hold a lot of positions myself simultaneously," says Fourniau. "A camera is magical in that you frame things and as long as you frame reality you are already directing it. Sometimes if you zoom back you see some things that ruins the atmosphere, so framing makes all the difference."

What was the Brussels component of the movie? "I came back to Brussels and started the long process of editing the film which I did myself, not only because my budget was so small, but also because I am an editor. Then I put together a post-production crew of Belgian and Belgian-based young artists and technicians. Music is a very important part of this movie. The cello music was written in London for the movie by Oliver Patrice Weder and the electro side of the music was written by Brussels DJ Antoine Leroy and when I started to work with this crew of dedicated creative people it brought it all to another level; I was no longer by myself editing."

The film recently premiered at the Be Film Festival. "Sometimes I feel that making a film is not that complicated, but making it exist for the public, that's the toughest part," Fourniau adds. "I have a release in Paris in a historical cinema in the Latin Quarter for at least one month starting in April. I'm looking for opportunities in Brussels but I don't want to rush things, and I will wait for it to finish its career in festivals."

Christopher Morrison: 'The festival run is dubious at best'

Christopher Morrison (American) and Ioana Mattei (Romanian) are a Brussels-based expat couple making movies. Two years ago, spending a summer in California, Mattei, a filmmaker with an emphasis on virtual reality and a 10-year Brussels resident, met Morrison when she took a film intensive class he was teaching. They have now been together in Brussels for two years.

Their latest project, Joanne, is currently being shot in Brussels. It is described as "the world's first one-woman feature film" and is "a feminist elevated genre one-room movie." What does this mean? "The one room part is the easiest," says Morrison. "We have one interior location (which is a chapel) and no exteriors.

"I consider myself a life-long feminist and when I sat down to write this script I wanted it to be an extension of that. We are very deeply concerned that the content of the film be feminist, that that's what the story line addresses directly. Elevated genre is an exciting new wave of cinema in which you take a piece of genre material, which in Hollywood would garner a $20-$200 million budget, and push it down into a very small budget focusing on the 'realistic' aspect of it."

In terms of Joanne, what does this mean specifically? "We've got a film that addresses women's issues, we've got a small film that is deeply character-driven and we've got a genre piece, a horror and thriller piece, made very personal, made for very little money," says Morrison.

"The story takes place in a reality where there is an acknowledged conspiracy that kidnaps women and breaks outspoken women in an effort to make sure that they stay in line with traditional gender roles, and then puts them back into society in order to keep us all docile. There is a counter-conspiracy. The story follows Joanne, one of these outspoken women who is kidnapped and trapped in a church. Little does the conspiracy know and little does Joanne know that she has her own deep secrets that change her and change the conspiracy as well."

Once the film is completed, what is the distribution strategy? "We, of course have our connections and distributor doors we can knock on, and we will do the festival run - though as any indie producer worth their salt knows, it's dubious at its best - but what we are counting on is the VOD world which is so wide open now, such platforms as Amazon Prime or Netflix. We have enough funds to get us through production but we have a crowdfunding campaign in place for the distribution."

Finally a word about the star: "Alex Reid, based in London is wonderful, amazing, she's the perfect actor for this because she's able to take her theatrical training and blend it with her considerable body of work," says Morrison. "It's a challenge, she's playing four different versions of the same character, sometimes at the same time in the same scene."