Boris Lehman 1971-1980 Belgium Documentary Experimental

Boris Lehman – Magnum Begynasium Bruxellense (1978)

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A living chronicle of the residents of Béguinage neighbourhood – so named because it is situated on the site of former Béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night. (Boris Lehman)

” Boris Lehman, a friend of Chantal Akerman, likes to define himself as an experimental filmmaker. He says he occasionaly uses cinema as a therapeutic tool in the Club Antonin Artaud, a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill, where he works. The reference, more than the modern documentary, is the collage, the juxtaposition of around thirty independent chapters, organized around a poor district of Brussels and taking place over a day or so. Boris Lehman has collected microscopic observations, funny details, and sought atmospheres. He speaks like an entomologist of a familiar world reduced to a series of small touches, furtive impressions. The author, the filmmaker, paradoxically becomes the center of the world: perhaps his film must be read as a sort of journal. ” (Louis Marcorelles, Le Monde)