The Ephemerist

“Ne détruisez jamais un document” Ferdinand Vander Haeghen (1830 – 1913) pleaded when he started the archive “vliegende bladen” (ephemera) as a Ghent university librarian in the 19th century. It is a bizarre hotchpotch of a wide variety of objects, including a parrot’s wing, orange wrappers, bags for bread, but also books that were considered lost, fragile porcelain business cards and prestigious publicity pamphlets. Following the footsteps of this somewhat eccentric, yet visionary bibliophile, the filmmakers plunge themselves into the abundant archive in order to evoke the Veldstraat in Ghent. Flirting with reality and fiction, Didier Volckaert and An van. Dienderen used old animation techniques and digital image processing. Patissier Bloch, workers of Inno Galeria/GB, managers of the many stores, the director of Monument Care, and the current directing librarian tell their stories about how drastically the daily life in the Veldstraat changed over the years.