The Sex Life of the Belgians
Dark, absurd, provocative, biting, anarchic: these are just some of the terms that best define the unique brand of humour that has flourished in Belgian cinema, especially in Wallonia, over the last few decades. While Belgian comedy has many facets, ranging from ferocity to self-deprecation, it always has a knack for pressing where it hurts while daring to laugh about it, painting hard-hitting social portraits, and putting our laborious lives into perspective.
Winner of the André Cavens Award in 1994
Somewhere between reality and fiction, this offbeat self-portrait of Jan Bucquoy traces a part of his youth to adulthood, through politics, cinema and sexuality.
Jan Bucquoy
Jan Bucquoy is a Belgian post-surrealist artist and situationist. He is a theater director, comic book writer, filmmaker, and creator of numerous happenings. He is best known for his bold television appearances, his annual coup d'état attempts in Brussels, and his more or less permanent museums, such as the Museum of Women or the Underpants Museum, located on the first floor of Dolle Mol, a famous libertarian café in Brussels that he ran for many years. Internationally, he is best known as a film director, with La vie sexuelle des Belges 1950–1978 (1994) and Camping Cosmos (1996) being his most famous films. His films often start with a political subject, leading the protagonists into burlesque situations, with sexual life being a metonym for emotional life. Influenced by Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life and Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, Bucquoy views the media world as a continuous spectacle that is commodified by capitalism.
