Nova Cinema still burning bright after 20 eclectic years

The Nova Cinema in Brussels is 20 years old. It threw a party in January to mark the anniversary, and will be celebrating through the year with events on themes dear to its heart.

“There will be a programme on cinemas that have disappeared, one on the shift in cinema technology, and another on family, in the sense that maybe the Nova is like a family,” says Katia Rossini, one of the cinema’s founders and still one of its busiest members.

Family is important because the Nova has always been organised collectively, not so much for ideological reasons but because lots of people have always wanted to get involved. Volunteers do everything from choosing the films to taking tickets and running the projectors. The same goes for the Nova’s friendly basement bar.

“There is this constellation of between 50 and 80 people volunteering at Nova, in different ways and with different degrees of involvement,” Rossini explains, “but there has always been a smaller core of people who work more on a daily or weekly basis.”

Until a few years ago the only person to be paid was a part-time accountant, but more recently money has been found for co-ordinating work, such as managing the projectors and other equipment, doing administration or organising the volunteers. Even so, this is not regular employment. “Everyone has another activity, either a full-time job or as an artist.”

Eclectic approach

When the Nova opened in January 1997, the first goal was to rescue a derelict cinema, the Studio Arenberg, not far from the Grote Markt. The initial agreement gave the project a two-year residence.

Then the idea was to show films that were not making it on to regular cinema screens, because either their form or their content didn’t fit in with commercial expectations. The first programme included political essays by Chris Marker, satire from Michael Moore (then far from famous), animation by Jan Svankmajer and two dark comedies from Dutch director Alex Van Warmerdam.

There was also an open screen for anyone with a film of their own to show, and evenings combining film with music and performance.

Over its first decade the Nova maintained this eclectic approach, particularly in its thematic programmes. These might delve into the cinema of a single country, opening up unexplored territory or overturning expectations. One programme, for instance, showcased realism in Indian cinema where most people think of Bollywood.

Then there were programmes looking at subjects as diverse as dance in cinema, perceptions of mental health, and ethnography. There was also a steady interest in urbanism, particularly through the outdoor film festival pleinOPENair, which each summer moved into abandoned or contested spaces around Brussels.

Slow it down

While the Nova quickly established an identity for itself, there has never been a hard and fast rule about what should be shown. “We try to explore trends in contemporary cinema in terms of content and in terms of form and narrative approach, but always with this idea that we might, on some occasions, look at more classic films,” says Rossini.

In its second decade, the number of large thematic programmes decreased, in order to have a less frantic pace and to avoid competing with the growing number of themed film festivals in Brussels. Instead, the Nova started to show individual films over one or two months, alongside more focused programmes and itself hosting festivals.

We knew we were taking a risk and the audience would probably not be huge … but it’s good to have the freedom to take these risks

“We try to propose films for a more diverse and less niche audience, but then you never know how the audience is going to respond,” says Rossini.

Last year’s Guy Maddin film The Forbidden Room, for example, was never going to be a blockbuster. “It’s a really difficult film, but at the same time it’s a quite unique filmic experience,” she says. “We knew we were taking a risk and the audience would probably not be huge, which was the case. But then it’s good to have the freedom to take these risks.”

But there are also successes, such as Le Chantier des gosses by Jean Harlez, a lost neo-realist film set in Brussels’ Marollen neighbourhood in the 1950s. After screening an old print at pleinOPENair, the Nova decided to restore it and release the new version. The response was overwhelming. “We had to add extra screenings and people were queuing up the street.”

New blood

Looking back over 20 years, Rossini attributes the Nova’s longevity to the diligence of the team and a continual evaluation – in endless meetings – of the cinema’s activities. “We work on it! And we are very conscious of the economic aspects of running the cinema.”

New blood has also been a factor. “There is a new generation of people within the team, bringing in a new energy,” she says. “People born in the 1980s and early 1990s don’t have the same film heritage, and it’s interesting to have that generational confrontation when discussing films.”

This new generation is also on the Nova’s mind at present because the cinema is currently up for sale. It has changed ownership several times in the past 20 years, but this time the collective hopes to buy the building itself.

“If we’ve got to this point, it means that people want the place to exist. So we are in the process of securing it,” Rossini says. “That would be the safest way to keep the project going for the next generation.”

Offscreen

One of the best festivals to make its home at the Nova is Offscreen, which each year presents a dizzying line up of genre and cult films. This 10th edition opens with French campus cannibal film Raw, and continues with Prevenge, a very dark British comedy about a pregnant woman’s deadly urges, and the retro playfulness of The Love Witch.

Other attractions include a retrospective of Czechoslovak cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on the strange and surreal; Apocalypse 69, on the psychosis that followed America’s summer of love; and a quick dip into Indonesian action films.

Photo: Sandrine Brouhier