Film en abstracte schilderkunst in de jaren 1960: Filmexperimenten van Jef Verheyen en Luc Peire

Together with the French pho­ne­tic poet Henri Chopin and the Swiss film­ma­ker Tjerk Wicky, Luc Peire pre­sen­ted the expe­ri­men­tal ​‘pho­ne­tic’ film Pêche de nuit in Knokke at EXPRMNTL 3 in 1963. The film was sub­se­quent­ly shown in Antwerp during the Benelux Experimental and Poetic Film Festival, win­ning the Sinjaal pri­ze for expe­ri­men­tal film.

“Luc Peire wan­ted to get to know my work. In 1961, he heard my first audio-poem Pêche de nuit [Night Fishing] on mag­ne­tic tape. For the film, Peire drew, in his own way, the sce­ne­ry on sheets of card­board which were filmed by the Swiss film­ma­ker Tjerk Wicky. Apart from the card­board sheets, Wicky used a Pyrex dish fil­led with water and which we stir­red with a fin­ger during the shoots. It are Wicky and Peire who came up with the idea of using ani­ma­ti­ons based on Peire’s dra­wings, also staying clo­se to the rhythms of the audio-poem.” (Henri Chopin)

“As regards the ima­ges, we adop­ted my way of see­ing things and cho­se tho­se that were the least cine­ma­to­grap­hic – that is, com­po­si­ti­ons of black and whi­te ver­ti­cals. In other words, we were attemp­ting to inte­gra­te and art dis­ci­pli­ne having a basic time dimen­si­on (pho­ne­tic poe­try) with an art dis­ci­pli­ne having a basic spa­ti­al dimen­si­on (pain­ting). This is a total­ly abstract film in terms of both sound and ima­ge. It is tru­ly what is com­mon­ly known as an expe­ri­men­tal film.” (Luc Peire)

“C’est en effet ce qui a impres­si­on­né Luc Peire. Il m’a dit : « C’est la pre­mi­è­re fois que je vois mes lig­nes bou­ger. » L’idée était de don­ner vie à ses piè­ces.” (Tjerk Wicky)

Essentieel is a short expe­ri­men­tal film made by the Belgian abstract pain­ter Jef Verheyen in col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with the poet Paul De Vree. A cine­ma­tic equi­va­lent of Verheyen’s attempts in repre­sen­ting the warmth and vibra­ti­ons of light in his mono­chro­me or ​“essen­ti­a­list” pain­tings of the late 1950s and 1960s, the film plays on the ten­si­ons bet­ween abstract color surfa­ces and natu­ral ele­ments. On the sound­track, com­po­ser Jan Bruyndoncks’s dro­ne sounds are com­bi­ned with the voi­ce of actor Julien Schoenaerts reci­ting a poe­tic text by De Vree, in which words such as ​“sun,” ​“cos­mos,” ​“infi­ni­ty,” and ​“vibra­ting” (spo­ken in various lan­gu­a­ges) stand out. (Steven Jacobs & Kathy Vanhout)

Als de zon zon­nig alleen zijn

Off to the cosmos

Plonger dans l’infini

Quiver enti­re­ly

In 1969, Jean Mil com­ple­ted his film Luc Peire’s Environment with elec­tro­nic music by Yagodic Davorin. The shoot took pla­ce insi­de and around Luc Peire’s Environnement I (1967).

“An expe­ri­men­tal short film? Not an expe­ri­ment, not a try-out, but a short film dea­ling with art, in a dif­fe­rent way than many docu­men­ta­ries and edu­ca­ti­o­nal films about art. Why not talk of an art-fic­ti­on-movie? My fan­ta­sy was awa­ke­ned on ente­ring Peire’s ​‘cham­ber’.

I visu­a­li­zed: ver­ti­cal … grap­hic rhythm … archi­tec­tu­re … ste­reo … paral­lele­pi­ped … Brasilia … magic … ver­ti­go … end­less … gno­sis … Peire’s Environnement pre­sen­ted for me the par­ti­cu­lar ​‘opti­cal’ chal­len­ge of trans­po­sing the limi­ted spa­ce of the cham­ber, mir­ro­red abo­ve and below to give an end­less paral­lele­pi­ped, onto the film screen as an end­less tower. For this we used wide ang­le and fish eye lenses. Given the mir­ror effect, the shooting points had to be very care­ful­ly cho­sen to pro­du­ce a maxi­mum per­spec­ti­val and spa­ti­al effect. How did the tur­bu­lent ver­ti­go effects come into being? It was real­ly very sim­ple, and a ques­ti­on of prac­ti­cal inven­ti­ve­ness. The came­ra stands upright and revol­ves on a gramop­ho­ne turn­ta­ble, with the cine­ma­to­grap­hic recor­ding speeds (6, 12 or 24 ima­ges a second) deter­mi­ning the various tur­bu­len­ce speeds.” (Jean Mil in 2007)

“Zoals de film­ma­ker Jean Mil in Luc Peires Environment ging, erin opging, erop inging en zo zijn film cre­ëer­de, zo raak­te ik speels poë­tisch bezield door Jean Mils fil­mi­sche ver­ken­ning en z’n hoogst per­soon­lij­ke ont­dek­king van Peire’s inte­gra­tie­werk. In zijn film Luc Peire’s Environment en bege­leid door het klank­de­co­rum van Yagodic Davorin treedt Jean Mil, en wij met de cine­ast, bin­nen in de ori­gi­ne­le kunst­ka­mer van Peire. De regis­seur schept er in de vol­strekt nieu­we ruim­te zijn eigen­zin­nig rit­me van ont­moe­ting en ont­dek­king en zo wordt zijn film geluk­kig geen klas­sie­ke kunst­do­cu­men­tai­re of een droog leer­do­cu­ment. Zoals Peire in zijn Environment de regu­lie­re maten van het door­snee tableau bewust door­breekt, zo heeft Jean Mil in zijn Peire’s Environment lak aan de gang­ba­re regels van de klas­sie­ke kunst­film.” (Wouter Hessels)