Directing
Boris Lehman, born March 3rd 1944 in Lausanne (Switzerland), is a Belgian filmmaker whose work is oriented towards experimental cinema, cinematographic essay, filmed news and documentary.
Histoire de mes cheveux ended with a shot where I found myself locked in a concentration camp. I had said shortly before that I was glad I finally arrived home. A song of hope, however, echoed with a fantasized happy ending (Hollywood kiss) and a song that heralded spring. In reality the film did not end there. There was a second part to this story. The first tells the story of the condemned man, the second that of the survivor. And so the film had to start with a scene that could never be shot where I was escaping from the camp.
Belgian filmmaker Eric Pauwels' meditation on dream, travel and film.
The story of my hair can be told in two lines. My hair was long and black. It has turned white. It hasn't been cut since 1982, almost thirty years ago. Story of my Hair is a journey, both in space and in time. Anyone looking for truths, whether geographical, scientific or historical, will be disappointed. After looking at real events and real places the film very soon distances itself from them, preferring poetry and fiction. In his own fashion the auteur has combined the story of Samson and Delilah, the journey of those condemned to the death camps, the science of hair and a few thoughts about the meaning and fragility of life.
Boris Lehman's funereal mask is constructed when he is alive (which therefore requires him to construct a rudimentary canal to breathe through the plaster).
This film takes a look at the French concentration camp at Rivesaltes. It does not deal with the site of memory but rather memories of the site through the concrete and physical data visible on the ground perceived as a holed-out space mined by disappearance, in particular the buildings, which subsist as ruins. This film is less preoccupied with drawing lessons from history than fuelling the present with a history that, like a blinding mirror, is of the utmost concern.
To escape the dreary daily routine of city life, where she no longer finds meaning in her life, a filmmaker sets out in search of her own film, using the filming of The Odyssey as a pretext.
Seven apartments, seven times of life: one film. A classic diary film, Boris Lehman intimately chronicles his own existence and that of objects and places that became an essential part of his life. A truly cinematic experience that gives us a highly European sense of space, time and history itself.
A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…
A boat ride to celebrate a birthday with friends becomes the pretext for a film shoot. A family film that quickly turns into a fable and a biblical tale. It is the story of Noah's Ark, braving the flood and saving a few remnants of humanity, which is stranded on Mount Ararat.
14Reels is a collective film in Super 8, where 14 directors in 14 cities around the world have filmed and edited in camera one reel each on the theme of the city.
The film is the cinematic encounter of two looks (that of the painter Arié Mandelbaum and that of the filmmaker Boris Lehman) with one voice: that of the singer Esther Lamandier (who goes by the same name as Arié: Mandelbaum means «I'amandier»).
A dialogue based on the Gospel according to St John. The apostles are played by friends (the disciples) of Boris Lehman, most of themselves moviemakers, filmed in front of the last house still standing opposite the new buildings of the European Union. Judas is played by Claudio Pazienza and Christ by Lehman himself. The film was shot in a matter of hours on a Sunday morning, with an incredible decor in a street that had been razed to the ground by property developers, just before the police arrived.
This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.
Set in the historic site of Brussels' béguinage, this film provides a detailed portrait of the neighborhood's residents. Comprised of about 30 interconnected chapters, it unfolds over the course of a single day, from dawn to dusk, with each segment building on the last, like a web of stories.