Film and abstract painting in the 1960s: Film experiments by Jef Verheyen and 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)