MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (Belgium, 1978, Boris Lehman)

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"[Boris Lehman] speaks as an entomologist of a familiar world reduced to a series of small touches, furtive impressions." -Louis Marcorelles LE MONDE

¨A living chronicle of the residents of the Béguinage neighborhood – so named because it is situated on the site of the former Brussels béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night.¨


-Boris Lehman

“Boris Lehman, a friend of Chantal Akerman’s, readily defines himself as an experimental filmmaker. He says that he occasionally uses cinema as a therapeutic tool in the Antonin Artaud Club, a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill, where he works. The reference, more than the modern documentary, is the collage – the juxtaposition of around thirty autonomous chapters, organised around a poor neighbourhood in Brussels and taking place over a day or so. Boris Lehman has collected microscopic observations, comical details, and sought atmospheres. He speaks as an entomologist of a familiar world reduced to a series of small touches, furtive impressions. The author, the filmmaker paradoxically becomes the center of the world: perhaps his film should be read as a kind of journal.”


-Louis Marcorelles LE MONDE

MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE
(Belgium, 1978)

Director: Boris Lehman

  • 145 minutes
  • 16mm
  • Color
  • Mono
Distribution Format/s: DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server; 4:3 DVD-PAL / Region 0 (No Regional Code)

Language: French with English Subtitles

DVD Booklet Text: Boris Lehman (38 pages, Bilingual English & French)

Published By: Re:Voir Video

Institutional Price: DSL $500; DVD $250 (plus shipping)

To order call: 212.280.8654 or click here for information on ordering by fax, e-mail or post.

FILMMAKER Boris Lehman