2023 is a jubilee year for Film Fest Gent. In October the festival celebrates its fiftieth edition. A golden festival year in which the festival will look toward the future, but also the ideal occasion to recall its rich past. On 25 January - the start date of the very first edition, in 1974 - Film Fest Gent kicks off its anniversary year with an exclusive screening in Studio Skoop of the first film screened in 1974: Fassbinder's Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten.
On 25 January 2023 it is exactly 49 years and 49 editions since the very first Film Fest Gent opened. It opens with Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten by the now legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder (then 28 years old).
This officially gave birth to Film Fest Gent: at Cinema Select, a cinema that is now the Zuid shopping center in Ghent and a stone's throw from today's Studio Skoop, film screenings organized by Studio Skoop and the "Universitaire Filmklub" took place from 25 January to 30 January 1974 for the very first "Internationaal Filmgebeuren Gent". In 1982 the event was renamed the Internationaal Filmfestival van Vlaanderen and in 2013 simply Film Fest Gent.
For film lovers, the festival has been a fixed value for half a century, now drawing 100,000 visitors annually, and enabling encounters between international and national film (music) guests, press, industry and audiences. Despite the name changes, the essence has remained firmly intact over the years: offering a unique screening platform for the most challenging, surprising and memorable films of the moment.
"In 2023 we will celebrate what makes Film Fest Gent a success, and at the same time look toward the future: our role as a festival in the international film landscape demands ongoing reflection and sharpening our mission: spreading film culture to a large, diverse and broad audience. Expect a lot of celebration in 2023, a new house style, and therefore also a critical examination of (our role in) the ecosystem of the film industry to which we as a festival belong."
— Marijke Vandebuerie, general director Film Fest Gent
From 1974 to 2013
The first edition in 1974 gave a platform to seventeen feature films and a host of short films, including films that have become true classics such as Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky or notorious underground titles such as Andy Warhol's Blue Movie. That the "Filmgebeuren" would grow into Belgium's largest film festival with international allure almost fifty years later, the initiators Ben Ter Elst and Dirk De Meyer had not dared to imagine, but they did hope: "We hope that if there is enough interest, this International Film Event can be repeated annually in the future, and thus improved and even expanded. We hope to be able to offer, year after year, a better overview of world film production and an increasingly representative picture of it. We also hope in the future to bring directors, actors, actresses and other film people to Ghent to present their own films." (from the introduction to the 1974 catalogue).
So many years later, their hope has not proven unfounded. Over time, countless renowned directors, actors and composers (thanks to the focus on film music) have come to Ghent for the festival. The first international guests were King Hu, Maximilian Schell and Bertrand Tavernier. In the 1980s the festival welcomed directors such as Peter Greenaway and Mel Brooks, but also top actors such as Jane Birkin, Andy García, Gina Lollobrigida and Charlotte Rampling.
Moreover, film music found its way into the programme. From 1985 the team led by Jacques Dubrulle gave the film competition the theme "the impact of music on film", and iconic composers such as Georges Delerue and Ennio Morricone gave concerts. In the 1990s major Hollywood stars came through: Brad Pitt, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Lee, Sandra Bullock, Anthony Perkins, Patricia Arquette, Kenneth Branagh, Tony Curtis and Maurice Jarre ... Celebrated directors such as Robert Altman, Atom Egoyan, Michael Haneke, Arthur Penn, Terry Gilliam and Paul Schrader even presented their films in person. The new millennium brought even more important guests: Hans Zimmer, Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Paul Verhoeven, Kathleen Turner, Darren Aronofsky, Agnès Varda, Isabelle Huppert, Asghar Farhadi ... And in recent years Viggo Mortensen, Andrea Arnold, Geraldine Chaplin, Céline Sciamma, Rian Johnson and many others, among others, have found their way to the film festival.
49 past festival years
In its anniversary year, Film Fest Gent will unlock its rich festival past: all festival films screened will soon be findable via filmfestival.be, with original synopses as they appeared in the annual film catalogues at the time. The festival starts with its early years: the 1970s. Over the course of the anniversary year, all subsequent decades will be added, and during 2023 it will be possible to browse extensively through every film ever screened.
For some of the films, the audience will also be informed where you can or cannot watch the films today.
Through the communication channels, festival memories will also be shared by means of photos and video material from the past, and the public will also be invited to share their memories.
The 1974 catalogue quoted De Volkskrant and described the opening film of the first edition as "a sad record of the everyday life of a small middle-class man, whose dreams and expectations are adapted to a marriage with a frustrated and calculating woman". And Fassbinder himself called it a melodrama, a genre for which he always asked for reappraisal.
The festive screening of Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (original language, English subtitles) takes place on 25 January at 20:00 in Studio Skoop (Sint-Annaplein 63, 9000 Gent). A limited number of tickets will be available via filmfestival.be.