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Eric Pauwels
Eric Pauwels (Belgium, 1953) is a filmmaker, author, lecturer, ethnologist, and anthropologist. At INSAS in Brussels, he studied theatre and became interested in its origins, the sacred rite. Pauwels also travelled to South-East Asia to film sacred dances. This choreography of bodies in trance lead him to film also the work of dancers of the Mudra generation such as Michèle Anne De Mey and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Passionate about cinema and anthropology, he received a PhD at the Sorbonne, where Jean Rouch was one of his important influences. Author of ethnographic documentaries on possession dances and on contemporary dance, in recent years he has devoted himself to more personal documentaries. The Trilogie de la cabane (Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille (2000), Les films rêvés (2010), and La deuxième nuit (2016)) led him to the more intimate form of the film diary. He has also published several novels.
After the death of his mother, a filmmaker reflects on how her passing has changed his way of seeing the world, and revisits how their relationship has made him free. The result is an intimate film, a vibrant collage of colours, textures, and memories, unified by the mother’s gentle gaze.
Tucked away in a small blue cabin at the end of his garden, a filmmaker dreams of a film containing all the others he has ever imagined. Everyday objects become vessels of memory, setting off an adventurous, playful wandering through time, space and the human imagination.
A playful, personal film in the form of a letter and an answer to the question posed by the filmmaker’s daughter: “Daddy, why don’t you make films for children?”
An epistolary film, addressed to filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, founder of the cinéma vérité genre. In his honour, Eric Pauwels directed this film touching the very essence of cinema and life.