Abacaris Films

Despite the fact that there have been many changes over time in the way anorexia is viewed on a societal, cultural and medical level, the condition remains an enigma. For centuries, descriptions and interpretations of the condition - some conflicting, some complementary - have followed on from one another. This illness of mind and body resists any exclusively biological or exclusively psychoanalytical approach. The body, which becomes a battleground, bears the brunt of this relationship and dependency disorder.

The iconic book ”Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century” by Patrik Ouředník, first published in 2001, thanks to the imagination of the French filmmaker has transformed into an apocalyptic chronicle of the last century. A straightforward testimony of scientific rationality, which led the society to a spiritual crisis and resulted in six genocides, is accompanied with melancholic Mahlerian echoes of La Belle Époque when the world was just getting ready for the century that negated all humanity. The film raises the question whether Europe in post-history and post-humanity, sweetly anaesthetized to collective unconsciousness, will pretend as if nothing had happened.

The unique story of film directors who managed to critic the Communist regime while being produced by the State: this is Polish cinema's golden age, in the 1970s. Director Ania Szczepanska, born in Poland and raised in France, meets prominent filmmakers, producers, actors such as Andrzej WAJDA, Marcel LOZINSKI, Krzyszstof ZANUSSI, Kristina JANDA, Ryszard BUGAJSKI and confronts them the testimonies of the State men of that time. Through unknown archives, forgotten documentaries and excerpts of cult films, she relates how the Solidarnosc people ended up in Cannes.

This film explains what James Ensor (1860-1949) meant for the development of art and makes palpable where he got his inspiration from.