Bare Handed

Abattoirs is shot in black and white and has a very sparse soundtrack. Its takes are stark there is hardly a camera movement sometimes photographs are filmed. Furthermore, almost unique in the history of film the film has square pictures which add to its intensity. (miff.com.au)

Step by step, the film reveals a woman's way through life. As the lonely bearer of many different thoughts, she dances the worlds of her memories, feelings and experiences, discoveries and cheerful emotions.

Inspired by jazz musician Jimmy Giuffre's statement, 'I’m not afraid to play something simple', Thierry Knauff has created a cinematic exercise in capturing beauty, observing nature and being moved by film. He translated the way jazz musicians play together into an interplay of elements he saw on the Tisza River, a tributary of the Danube: rustling willow leaves, followed by the whirring of thousands of mayfly wings and a young girl's hair blowing in the wind. The film plays with abstract patterns and focuses on emerging life and the tough battle for survival in nature. Says Knauf, ‘Vita brevis is a poem of the moment, an evocation of the fragile and fleeting dance of life.’

Fragments of a text by Jean Genet – “Four Hours in Chatila” – are illustrated by summer images of a park in Brussels. The contrast between what is seen and what is said attempts to stop, to break the flow of information which tends to neutralize horror.

Anton Webern's "Langsamer Satz" for string quartet was performed as part of the "My GAIA" concert during the Festival's 2012 edition. Composed in 1905, "Langsamer Satz" is in traditional sonata form and in the key of C Major; it would be another twenty years before Webern turned to twelve-tone technique. "Langsamer Satz" premiered in 1962, seventeen years after Webern's death, and has the longest playing time of any piece in his body of work.

This experimental film examines the physical and emotional effect of violence as it is seen through the eyes of women around the world, ranging from a Irish mother explaining the use of "knee-capping" by the IRA to an Arabic woman describing how war and terrorism has impacted her country. Each woman who narrates uses her own native tongue, with nine languages represented on the soundtrack. While the film does not feature an original score, the Master Drummers of Burundi appear in one sequence. Wild Blue, Notes for Several Voices was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard program at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.

Mental anguish is all that's present in the film Seuls / Alone (1989). Shot like a grungy medical documentary, Smolders and co-director Thierry Knauff intercut shots of several children at a Belgium psychiatric clinic. The kids are shown with forlorn expressions, twicthing their eyes, sometimes smiling, shaking, jumping, rocking their heads side to side, or smacking their heads with horrific glee against walls. It's a minimalist work that captures the intense monotony of lost and disturbed young minds, and maintains a gritty intensity. - kqek.com