The Making of Justice

10 May, 2017 - 20:00
STUK, Leuven

In the presence of and in conversation with director Sarah Vanhee.

 

The screening is organised by STUK and Courtisane, in collaboration with the Lieven Gevaert Centre and the Institute of Philosophy (KU Leuven) in the series MOVING IMAGE – FOCUS..

 

Sarah Vanhee (°1980, Oostende, BE) / Sarah Vanhee's artistic practice is linked to performance, visual arts and literature, and unfolds in various environments. 'I create temporary, porous yet clearly defined spaces in which I analyze existing realities and confront those with an absurd, utopic or poetic proposal. From this friction diffferent narratives, landscapes, practices and fictions emerge.' Vanhee regularly works with CAMPO (Ghent) and is founding member of Manyone vzw. She lives and works in Brussels.

The Making of Justice

Sarah Vanhee
,
BE
,
2017
,
DCP
,
colour
,
60'

The Making of Justice is a film about seven prisoners working together with Sarah Vanhee on the screenplay for a crime film. Like the main character in the film they are making up, they are all guilty of murder. To shape the story, they draw on their own experiences, ideas and desires. We, the viewers, can only guess whether they are using fiction as a means of confirming, transcending or transforming their present situation. In the course of the film they discuss criminality as a parallel reality, what the nature of justice is, and what a society would be like if it was oriented towards healing rather than retribution. "The justice system is not synonymous with justice itself. The justice system means the application of rules, but justice is a human capacity", says one of the men. The image of ‘the criminal’ is always elusive, both in terms of form (because the lens always remains out of focus) and content, because the authors and their character appear first as people and only then as offenders.