Using rare cinematic, photographic and sound archives, Xaraasi Xanne - Crossing Voices recounts the exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by western African immigrant workers living in workers’ residences in France. The story of this improbable, utopic return to the homeland follows a winding path that travels through the ecological challenges and conflicts on the African continent from the 1970s to the present day. 

In the film industry gender equality is far from achieved. For this evening, three women delve into their work. With their North African and Middle Eastern film excerpts, they will discuss gender stereotyping, cultural taboos and their own experience as a director or film programmer.

Brussels has always been a city that embraced exiles.The Price of the Ticket continues this tradition. The Fashion designer and activist Rachida Aziz is now inviting a new generation of refugees on stage. Expect an evening of music, dance, poetry and video.

During the Day of the Dance we show a screening of IT'S IN THE AIR. In this 2008 collaboration between Jefta van Dinther and Mette Ingvartsen, the two performers jumped on large trampolines for 50 minutes. This video registration is all that remains of the intense physical challenge.

PERFORMATIK 2015 DOUBLE BILL - Body Not Fit For Purpose is the first overtly political work of choreographer Jonathan Burrows and musician Matteo Fargion. Its starting point is the uselessness of dancing to express anything of any real concern and at the same time the inherent, gloriously foolish radicality of the attempt. With sequenza, artist Manon de Boer and violinist and composer George van Dam present a programme of live performances and films around four compositions for solo violin

In the early seventies, a research project was set up at Columbia University in New York to determine whether apes are capable of any human form of communication. The film shows the sometimes comical, but above all astonishing story of this attempt to make a man out of an ape. After the film, there will be a talk with Stijn Bruers on animal rights, etc.

The philosopher Vinciane Despret asks 26 intriguing and pertinent questions about what animals do, want and ‘think’. This yields marvellous and sometimes hilarious stories, told by scientists, animal-tamers, zookeepers, etc. Stories that make us think. We are screening two short documentaries made in 2005 by film-maker and activist Didier Demorcy, to which Vinciane Despret also contributed, one on sheep, one on wolves.

Refugees are literally stuck somewhere between their country of origin and the country they arrive in. Blue Key Identity tells the story of mothers and sons who have become separated. It is a film dialogue between here and there, a ‘glocal’ show.

KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 010 - Video director Sarah Vanagt has chosen her own street, the Boulevard d’Ypres, as both the setting and theme of her latest project. Urban development and gentrification threaten this ‘Mediterranean’ area. So in order to memorialize her street, Vanagt went out to meet shop owners and anyone else she came across, assembling their stories to create a fairy tale.

starring Werner Hirsch