The High Priestess’ intuition sheds new visions and hidden knowledge on the argos’ collection. In this film programme, side A presents a selection of recent acquisitions of our distribution catalogue and side B follows two specific thematic threads in our collection. The first traces stories of migration, diasporic experiences and representation through various archival filmmaking practices, while the second rounds up critical reflections on how the image-making practices of the past impact our present.

side A : Arrivals (selection of recent acquisitions 2023-2024)

argos holds the largest collections of artist films and videos in Belgium with nearly 6,000 works. By actively distributing and constantly updating our distribution catalogue, we facilitate the promotion of the work of Belgian and international audiovisual artists. Our catalogue reveals a wide variety of audiovisual practices and showcases films from the 1970s to today for new audiences and other art institutions, as well as for curators, programmers, researchers and scholars. This programme highlights seven new acquisitions (2023-2024).

Even The Prompter Dies (2024) Erik Bünger & Manuel Saiz, 13' : This experimental video essay investigates the power of speech over images. Multiple voice-overs wrestle for control over the footage. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who is winning.

The Perfect Square (2024) Gernot Wieland, 8' : Director Gernot Wieland worked for twelve years with an animal trainer who taught birds to fly in circles or squares. His latest film explores the broader question of how aesthetic and social norms influence and control society by studying the desire to command other creatures.

Regarding Faustine (2024) Ira Goryainova, 14' : A short poetic essay depicting a young girl, Faustine, explores the relationship between the director and the protagonist and how the film camera, as a silent, omnipresent mediator, defines their bond.

Barefoot Birthday on Unbreakable Glass (2024) Rebecca Jane Arthur, 18' : Three women each spend a day with the filmmaker in their homes. They confide in her stories of art creation, immigration and relationships. Each woman recalls a gift their mother gave them, multiplying gestures of reconciliation and celebration.

Extended Presences (2023) Margaux Dauby, 13' : Extended Presences follows several women in their seasonal work as fire watchers in Portugal. Watching the watchers, the film emphasises their quiet wait and their careful observation.

Lomme‘s Garden (2024) Eva Claus, 10' : Claus observes a neighbour's garden over the different seasons. Lomme explains what he does while harvesting the crops of his little paradise where sunflowers, salads, kale, chicory, pumpkins, birds and bees rule the land.

Valley Pride (2023) Lukas Marxt, 15' : Against the backdrop of endless rock formations and dancing mirages caused by the heat, anonymous workers fertilise, harvest, and pack lettuce in a quasi-automated routine. Visually stunning, the monocultural symmetry and its ballet of irrigation testify to man’s self-extinction in the service of increased profit.

Riparia, riparia (2024) Marion Guillard, 7' : A pile of sand on a roundabout in the middle of the industrial port of Antwerp becomes a monumental sculpture as hundreds, almost thousands, of shore swallows fly over and use the mound as their living and breeding ground.

side B : Reflections

Following two thematic threads of the argos collection, we present a programme of documentary and experimental short films that trace stories of migration, diasporic experiences and representation through various archival filmmaking practices. The first selection weaves personal experiences and postcolonial views into collective histories. It is followed by a collection of critical reflections on how the image-making practices of the past impact our present.

part #1 : postcolonial mediations

La Mazda jaune et Sa Sainteté (2018) Sandra Heremans, 11' : A conceptual experiment on what it means to start a film with a black image. The story of a Rwandese girl and a missionary falling in love blends into a subtle and personal essay on what images and colonial history mean to their daughter.

Le Roi n'est pas mon cousin (2022) Annabelle Aventurin, 31': Elzéa De Aventurin, author of Sunny Karukera, Stranded Guadeloupe (1980), indulges in a series of interviews with her granddaughter. Together, they sail from one end of the black Atlantic to the other, tracing a history of silences, pride, and revolt.

Nou voix (2018) Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 15': Nou Voix is an autobiographical video departing from the participation of the artist's father as a Guyanese figurant in the historic film Jean Galmot, aventurier (1990).

Standing Still (2013) Marie Voignier, 15': The myth of the white settler finds its most destructive embodiment in the hunting guide whose descriptions of the practice of hunting oscillate between fatal violence and religious mimicry.

Appunti del passaggio (2014-2016) Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo, 44': Appunti del passaggio presents a counter-narrative to the widespread imaginary of the so-called Western European economic miracle of the postwar decades by remapping migrant trajectories from southern Italy in the 1960s to Switzerland in the mid-1990s.

part #2 : media & memory

Liberation Radio (2021) Esther Johnson, 14': In 1968, a group of American military deserters set up a radio station in the North Vietnamese mission in Stockholm, and used magnetic tape, pop music and political rhetoric in an attempt to persuade others to desert.

dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) Johan Grimonprez, 68': dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y traces the history of hijackings and terrorism as portrayed by mainstream television media. It blends archival footage and personal home movie imagery to investigate the media politics of our contemporary catastrophe culture.

Voices (2015) Miguel Peres dos Santos, 19' : Public archives attest to our shifting collective consciousness, revealing bias towards historical events. Voices wades through a significant amount of public television footage related to the migration of people from the former Dutch colony, Suriname.

THE PORTERS (2022) Sarah Vanagt, 31' : A group of young people from different cultural backgrounds sit together on the benches of a public park in Brussels. They watch the oldest preserved film footage of the Congo on their phones while playing a memory game.