Fans of experimental film and media art will enjoy the Vooruit’s most ambitious Courtisane yet, with a bulging programme that belies the mere five days of festival. The art centre in Ghent stages this annual event, which takes place inside its walls and at the city’s Sphinx cinema and Film Plateau.

Courtisane uses Butler’s approach in its programming: how can we escape the deeply embedded social and cultural narratives we replay in our heads every day to allow ourselves to see and interpret information in different ways?

With this sentiment as a guide, the films – most of them shorter than 60 minutes – are screened together according to themes. The seven films of “Reveal the Hidden”, for instance, includes a Danish movie that tries to visualise blindness (“to be watched with eyes open or shut”), a Belgian film featuring a woman explaining the mysterious spots she sees every day, and a film about glass jars found buried in the American desert that contained notes written by children detailing the abuse they were suffering at the hands of family members.

“That Dimension”, meanwhile, is a series of films on actions that are unclear and ceremonies that blend reality and spirituality. A Letter to Uncle Boonmee is a Thai/British film that shows a group of young soldiers digging up the ground – but are they exhuming or burying? Another demonstrates the way American Peter Rose experiments with lightness and darkness as he seeks out deserted places in large cities and performs bizarre light ceremonies.

“Time and Time Again” features two films, the 15-minute Atlantiques from France and the 53-minute Not Waving, But Drowning by Elias Grootaers. The young Flemish filmmaker has already made an impression with the award-winning Lines, which followed three aging railways workers in the Belgian countryside, and is back with this film, which follows the experiences of Indian refugees as they are pulled from containers aboard a ship in Zeebrugge. More poetry than documentary, the film follows them as they wander about the harbour terminals, losing all sense of time and place. The title is taken from the poem by Stevie Smith: “I was much further out than you thought /And not waving but drowning”.

Courtisane also includes an exhibition of video art and several special guests, including American David Gatten, who brings along the first four parts of his nine-part series Secret History of the Dividing Line; American Morgan Fisher, who introduces his own work plus the programme he has curated; and Irish-born David O’Reilly, a master of animation.

17-21 March
Across Ghent
www.courtisane.be