Where to next?
Just give a call to Location Flanders, and they’ll set you up with another unforgettable scene. The new film commission is late in coming – most other regions have had film location agencies for years. But they’ve been quick to pull together a huge number of local locations to suit any need: beautiful and gothic, gritty and foreboding.

“The only thing we don’t have is mountains,” says Christian De Schutter of the Flemish Audio-Visual Fund, where the Location Flanders regional offices are co-ordinated. “So if you want to make a film about mountain climbing, nope, not here. Apart from that, we’ve got it covered.”

Indeed, a quick look at the catalogue of photos on the Location Flanders website is pretty convincing. The obvious mediaeval cathedrals and castles are present, as well as the high rises of Brussels, the parks of Bruges, the imposing pillars of the University of Gent and the rusty barges at the Port of Antwerp.

Along with the hundreds of outdoor location photos already on the website, Location Flanders will add interiors, from Art Deco to contemporary.

“A complete range of locations is really valuable for international productions,” explains Wim Cassiers of the Antwerp branch of Location Flanders. “They can go from the sea, to a port, to a mediaeval city. That combination will attract more work.”

And it’s the international movie productions that Location Flanders wants to attract. Flemish films already use the region to its full advantage, and now the new film commission can take scenes from those movies to international film festivals, like Berlin and Cannes, where location scouts prowl the info tents. This spring, for the very first time, Flanders will be able to take part in the trade show in Santa Monica, California, which is completely devoted to location scouting.

Seeing your city or country on the big screen is fun for audiences, but the main goal, of course, is to get those euros flowing into Flanders. “From the moment you have an international film crew in Belgium, they need accommodation, they need to be fed, they buy things in shops,” says De Schutter. “They fly in key cast and crew, but they also employ local technicians and often local cast. Flanders wins.”

In fact, Flanders’ cities cottoned onto this long ago – along with the fact that film productions bring in the tourists. The Antwerp film office actually preceded Location Flanders by 17 years. In the early 1990s, the city set it up to deal with mostly local requests to shoot commercials and short and feature films in the city. Then, after the success of television cop show Flikken, Ghent opened a film office in 2001.

“When Flikken showed in the Netherlands, one of the first things Ghent noticed was the considerable increase in Dutch tourists,” notes De Schutter. “And the film In Bruges is like a 90-minute commercial. They have also seen increased tourism and have had several more requests from other filmmakers.”

Even a, shall we say, less than romantic view of a city can attract people. After the run-down flats and grimmest streets of Ostend featured in the spiritedly violent Ex-Drummer, young people – for better or worse – took a renewed interest in the city. “They want to see the locations in real life,” says De Schutter.

Both Ostend and Bruges soon followed the first two cities with their own film offices, and the Flemish Region decided it made sense to pull all four together under the Location Flanders moniker. Not only will the resulting collective promotion bring in more and larger productions, but local film offices ensure that if a production company is interested in shooting in Flanders, it will not pull out due to troublesome logistics. No big production wants to come to a city where it’s not easy and fast to gain a permit to shoot in streets and other public places.

Limburg is now the only province without a dedicated film office, but the commission is talking to the local authorities about establishing one. The province, however, is no slouch when it comes to attracting productions: Limburg has been home to two big Flemish drama series in the last two years and another series has already chosen it as a setting. (See opposite page.) A film office is sure to follow.

Online
www.locationflanders.be