Courtisane festival 2012

21 March, 2012 - 25 March, 2012
  • Ghent

The Courtisane Festival proposes an adventurous journey through a world of cinema; a cinema of the world that all too often remains invisible, condemned to the margins both of film and art. The festival wants to function as an open hub for stimulating dialogues and enthusiastic encounters, about and between image and imagination, sight and insight, looking and learning. A festival as a space of possibility.

The program of this eleventh edition of the festival offers a selection of genuine and challenging cinematic work, beyond conventions, genres, disciplines and formats, moving freely between feature-length and short film, documentary and fiction, experimental and mainstream, cinema and visual arts. Next to the yearly competition of remarkable Belgian and international work seen during the past year, there is a wide array of thematic and monographic programmes, performances, installations and talks.

The three "Artist in Focus" programmes are, in all their versatility, once again the heart of the festival. From the intense sensory cinema of Philippe Grandrieux to the "expanded cinema" explorations of Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder and the groundbreaking swagger of the duo Ben Rivers and Ben Russell: here is a cinema that hurts and cures, confronts and reflects, vibrates and touches. Here is what cinema is capable of.