Anouk De Clercq: Cinema as Adventure

In my never-ending search for other ways of looking and other ways of making images and presenting film, the explorative realm of cinema is full of adventure.

The way we see the world is influenced by what we know or what we believe in. There are many possible perspectives from which to look at a thing, a landscape, a person, a story, yourself. Unfortunately, we poor myopic humans lack the gift of birds of prey, with their long-range sight, and the talents of houseflies, with their panoramic vision. Through our large brains, however, we are at least aware of the limits of our seeing. With a humility rare in our species, we acknowledge that there is much we cannot see and therefore devise ways to observe the world.

It is difficult to look and to see at the same time. Only genuine attention is able to rival the most powerful magnifying lens. If you look long enough at what seems ordinary, it often becomes strange and unfamiliar, as every child learns when they repeatedly say their own name out loud. If our looking is limited to our eyes, we are seeing blind. When our field of vision is not demarcated by an edge, but presents itself as an infinitely explorable openness, the world breaks open.

In this masterclass, we approach film in an adventurous way. How can a film be made in which the camera does not mimic the human eye? How can a film be made that looks like something the viewer has never seen before? How can a film be made that is not based on the ordinary way humans see the world? How can a film be experienced when there are no images to see? How can cinema become an adventure? Using films and film clips, we try to answer these questions in the freest way possible.