Female Flemish filmmakers in spotlight at Flagey

Flanders has experienced a renaissance in cinema this century, with a much more regulated industry, including funding and promotions agencies and a tax shelter that has done wonders for investments in audio-visual productions. There are more movies, more international attention for those movies and striking first productions by young film school graduates.

But, as Flagey so succinctly points out to us, most of those graduates are boys. Its Flemish Women Filmmakers cycle in September tries to even the balance a bit.

The films range from 1998’s unsentimental coming-of-age film Rosie by Patricia Toye all the way up to this year’s Past Imperfect by Nathalie Teirlinck, which finds a prostitute suddenly confronted by her estranged six-year-old son (pictured).

Those are certainly films to look out for, as is Fien Troch’s Home – a documentary-style drama that keeps you nervously waiting for the tensions to finally explode, though still manages to surprise you with how. And Dorothée Van Den Berghe’s My Queen Karo, which finds a girl on the verge of adolescence walking the line between her loving but selfish father and the mother who suffers for it amid the social revolution of 1970s Amsterdam.

So do all these filmmakers being women tie the movies together somehow? One way does seem relevant: Children figure heavily in almost every film, whether as actual point-of-view subjects or as crucial to the adults’ activities. Whereas Flanders’ male director are often preoccupied with relationships between men or couples, the females appear to be considering what shaped their place in the world.

This is an interesting perspective, and I am delighted that Flagey has dedicated a programme to Flemish women directors. But I look forward to a time when it will no longer be necessary.

1 September to 28 October, Flagey, Heilig-Kruisplein, Brussels