Filming Unspoken Histories focuses on Home Front, starring Gerard Depardieu, which delves into a buried past that begs for more light, more detail.
Answering that need is a Live Zoom session called Filming Unspoken Histories – Sylvia Vollenhoven in conversation with Lucas Belvaux. Belvaux is the Belgian director of Home Front, one of the European Film Festival’s free screenings between 12-22 November.
Belvaux’s outstanding film raises many questions. The film is set in a small French village where everyone knows everyone but we soon discover buried traumas from the time its young menfolk were soldiers in Algeria during that country’s war of independence. But it is not just the war itself, it is what war does to people. Young people especially. Moving beyond the filmic aspects the discussion will explore questions that resonate with countries across the world, including South Africa.
How (why) does a country forget its past? How do people forget? How can the ghosts of the past be met? For individuals and for societies? And what is the role of film in helping understanding, confronting and healing a past divided by race, class and culture.
Filming Unspoken Histories Panel
The Zoom event will be facilitated by award-winning journalist, filmmaker and writer Sylvia Vollenhoven, who will contribute perspectives from South Africa’s own history. Watch the film then come to the conversation at 18.00 on Friday 20 November – click on the link on the Special Events page HERE
The European Film Festival 2020 is a partnership project of the Delegation of the European Union to South Africa and 12 other European embassies and cultural agencies in South Africa: the Embassies of Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Wallonie-Bruxelles International, the French Institute in South Africa, the Goethe-Institut, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the British Council. The festival is organised in cooperation with CineEuropa and coordinated by Creative WorkZone.
WHAT: Live Zoom session Filming Unspoken Histories
WHEN: 18.00 on Friday 20 November
HOW: click on the link on the Special Events page HERE
Home Front is showing in the European Film Festival 2020
Photo: Sylvia Vollenhoven by George Hallett
