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 towards the future, but also the ideal opportunity to recall its rich past in the run-up. On 25 January - the start date of the very first edition, in 1974 - Film Fest Gent kicks off its celebration year with an exclusive screening in Studio Skoop of the first film shown in 1974: Fassbinder's Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten.
On 25 January 2023, it is exactly 49 years and 49 editions ago that the very first Film Fest Gent opened. This happened with Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten by the now legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder (then 28 years old).
This is how Film Fest Gent was officially born: in Cinema Select, a cinema where the shopping center Zuid is now located in Gent and a stone's throw from the current Studio Skoop, film screenings were organized from 25 January to 30 January 1974 by Studio Skoop and the "Universitaire Filmklub" for the very first "Internationaal Filmgebeuren Gent". In 1982, the event was renamed Internationaal Filmfestival van Vlaanderen and in 2013 to simply Film Fest Gent.
For film lovers, the festival has been a fixture for half a century, now attracting 100,000 visitors annually and enabling encounters between international and national film (music) guests, press, industry and public. Despite the name changes, the essence remains unshakeable throughout the years: to provide 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 we will look towards the future: our role as a festival in the international film landscape requires constant reflection and sharpening of our mission: the dissemination of film culture to a large, diverse and broad audience. In 2023, expect much celebration, a new house style, and also a critical questioning of (our role in) the ecosystem of the film industry to which we belong as a festival."
— Marijke Vandebuerie, General Director Film Fest Gent
From 1974 to 2013
The first edition in 1974 provided a platform for seventeen feature films and a host of short films, including films that became true classics such as Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky or notorious underground titles such as Andy Warhol's Blue Movie. That the "Filmgebeuren" had grown almost fifty years later into Belgium's largest film festival with international prestige, the initiators Ben Ter Elst and Dirk De Meyer could not have dared to think, but they did hope: "We hope that if there is enough interest, we can repeat this Internationaal Filmgebeuren annually in the future, and thus improve and even expand it. We hope that from year to year we can provide a better overview of world film production and an increasingly representative image of it. We also hope that in the future we will be able to invite directors, actors, actresses and other film people to come to Gent to present their own films." (from the introduction to the 1974 catalogue).
Many years later, their hope has proven not unfounded. Over the years, countless renowned directors, actors and composers (thanks to the focus on film music) have made their way to Gent for the festival. The first international guests were King Hu, Maximilian Schell and Bertrand Tavernier. In the 1980s, the festival welcomes 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 finds its way into the programme. The team led by Jacques Dubrulle gives the film competition from 1985 onwards the theme 'the impact of music on film' and iconic composers such as Georges Delerue and Ennio Morricone give concerts. In the 1990s, major Hollywood stars come to town: 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 personally present their films. The new millennium brings 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, among others Viggo Mortensen, Andrea Arnold, Geraldine Chaplin, Céline Sciamma, Rian Johnson and many others have made their way to the film festival.
49 past festival years
In its jubilee year, Film Fest Gent will unlock its rich festival past: all films shown at the festival will soon be accessible via filmfestival.be, with original synopses as they appeared in the yearly film catalogues at the time. The festival will start with its early years: the 1970s. Throughout the jubilee year, all subsequent decades will be added, and by the end of 2023 it will be possible to browse freely through all films ever shown.
For some of the films, the public will also learn where you can or cannot watch the films today.
Through communication channels, festival memories will also be shared using photographs and video material from the past, and the public will also be invited to share their memories.
The 1974 catalogue cited De Volkskrant and described the opening film of the first edition as "a sad record of the everyday life of a small bourgeois man whose dreams and expectations have been adjusted in a marriage with a frustrated and calculating woman". And Fassbinder himself called it a melodrama, a genre for which he has always advocated greater appreciation.
The festive screening Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (original language, English subtitled) 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.