Dovfilm

Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.

To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."

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.

Portrait of Richard Kenigsman by Boris Lehman.

The film narrates the day-to-day existence of a filmmaker wandering through his city (Brussels) and who has a notion to follow in the footsteps of dramatist Antonin Artaud and visit the Tarahumara people of Mexico. This is a film about intimacy and friendship. Written in the first person, it places Boris and Brussels in the centre of the universe, here represented by the crazy, vertiginous, endless spiral of the biblical Tower. It is Boris's diary and self-portrait. He plays himself on screen (as do the cast of a hundred who also allowed themselves to be “babelised“).

The man carrying his body, his reels of film, his bag and his old Nikon, is Boris Lehman, he's also Sisyphus, Jesus Christ, and Ixion as told by Alfred Jarry in La Chandelle Verte. An essay on heaviness and lightness. The carrying man would like to fly, vanish into thin air, into light. When he meets another machine-man, who carries electronic pictures, his dream will come true.

Adrienne is not my mother. She is not Jewish. I met her five years ago, at Edouard’s, where I’d gone to ask my friend to lend me a dinner jacket for the premiere of my film “Life Lessons”. She came to see the film and we began to meet often (Boris Lehman).

A man looks at himself in the mirror and does not recognise himself. That man is me. An old, tired, wounded man. So he wanders around in circles, looking for a woman who would look at him (and recognise him).

The dialogue is based on the Gospel according to St John. The apostles are played by friends (the disciples) of Boris Lehman, most of them movie-makers, 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 Boris Lehman. 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.

The son (Julien) returns to his father (Arié), who offers him rabbit for dinner, but the son only wants honey. The father goes to get some from the hive but gets stuck inside. Fairy tale or pastiche, it all ends badly. With the murder of the father. Then a hunter arrives who tries to restore some order and ends up praising chocolate. A play by Claude Schmitz, premiered at the Épongerie in 2006.

Through many photographs, he tells the story and allows his story to be told by those photographed. This is where the brilliant documentary reversal takes place.

Julien and Anty, two young slackers, take seven days to move three trinkets a short distance, exemplifying the strategy of least effort. They sit on a sofa on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to turn green, taking breaks and intermissions. The film humorously mocks these pseudo-intellectuals, who will soon be together in the same bed, drinking the same cans, just two streets away.

In a burlesque mode, the director tries to deflate the world (realized here by a globe), to level it, to put its three dimensions in two. To do this, he fights against the material and the ball, embraces it, lies down on it, twists and tramples it. Illusory victory or vain efforts?

This is the story of a double spell. Are scarecrows not the remains of the living dead whose souls are trying to escape to ascend to heaven? The game of hopscotch goes From earth to heaven, Between luck and the well, You come back and it's over. Little, little girl, You're here to have fun. Throw the stone well, Watch where you put your feet.

Sarajevo, 1993. Haska is 28 years old. She loves Elvir, but even more so their 8-year-old son Denis, who has taken center stage in her life since the war began. Haska tries to give her daily life a semblance of normality. Elvir's death at the front will shatter this apparent normality.