Olivier van Malderghem
ovanmalder@yahoo.fr
Olivier seeks achievement in both aspects of filmmaking: writing and producing. All his films have been selected in class A festivals.
Back to the lost land (Retour à la terre perdue)
Feature documentary, 2024, web page in progress.
STATEMENT, by Olivier
Twenty years ago, I was confronted almost simultaneously with two revelations of heavy family secrets: that my mother's partner was part of the Brabant killers, a gang of "mad killers" who terrorized Belgium in the 1980s, and, moreover, that my paternal grandfather's grandfather, Augustin, was sentenced to death in 1848 for having tried to overthrow the Belgian monarchy (Risquons-Tout affair). These two revelations, the trauma and intra-family stress caused by them, triggered fatal leukemia in my daughter Marjorie, a hypersensitive person.
After ten years of reflection, then ten years of production, two films resulted from these events: Since you went away, and this film: Back to the lost land. The first film is mainly devoted to Marjorie in her relationship with the first family secret, the second is mainly devoted to showing that Augustin fought in his time against an ultra-reactionary ideology, the same one that animated the Brabant Killers 150 years later. These family secrets turn out to be state secrets as well. Which leads the Belgian authorities to cover up, today, both the Risquons-Tout affair and the Brabant Killers affair.
Since you went away (Depuis que tu es partie)
Feature documentary, 2024
The Poisons of Secret
By tackling the death of his daughter Marjorie, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 20, Olivier Van Malderghem constructs a film of incredible richness and complexity in which a terrible family secret, the Walloon Brabant Killings, and the hope of an utopia, mix. Far from a mourning film, Since You Went Away paints the portrait of several generations, and is also a magnificent self-portrait of the director.
Frédéric Arends in Cinergie.be
... It was a truly luminous tribute to the memory of your daughter, with moving sequences that delve deep into your intimacy as a man, father and filmmaker facing loss. It was truly powerful and moving.
I also wanted to salute the work you did with Pauline in editing. You managed to refine a very rich and varied material, juggling between different formats and temporalities, while maintaining a remarkable coherence and fluidity.
Once again, thank you for the invitation. It was a real pleasure to discover your film on the big screen.
Mathieu Volpe, film director, by mail
Outstanding...
Dinnie Martin, Paradocs ASBL, by mail
STATEMENT by Olivier
In 2006, at the age of twenty, my daughter Marjorie died of leukemia. This film reflects the work of mourning which followed this death. But it also tells of a search, in response to a desperate reflection that Marjorie shared with me during her treatment: “It’s unfair what’s happening to me.” Unfair is an understatement. But I didn't see it. I didn't see that rather than leukemia, it was others who put her in danger.
As she struggled to cope, my maternal family abandoned her. For a year and a half, none of them came to visit her. Like Marjorie, I never imagined that such abjection was possible.
Today I understand. My maternal family was bound by a secret. A secret that makes those who are not initiated into it a threat to those who keep it. One of them had killed.
Since Marjorie's death, I have picked up the threads, one by one, and pieced together a story that has taken me beyond imaginable.
My research was initiated at a time when I was in disarray, confronted with two issues that were beyond me and occupied my entire mind: Marjorie's leukemia, and her abandonment by my maternal family. So I had other concerns than the Brabant Killings, terrorist attacks which happened in the 1980s and terrified belgians from 1982 to 1985, when we were in the early 2000s.
But The Brabant Killings imposed themselves on me when, exhausted and desperate by the turn Marjorie's illness was taking, I experienced a moment of self-hypnosis which made me receptive to memories "buried" in my unconscious.
I understood that they were putting me on the path to explaining the rejection of Marjorie by my maternal family.
It didn't take long for me to recognize the collector as the killer. Furthermore, the relationship between the “giant” and Daniel, my mother’s companion, was unmistakable.
We know how those around you can play a positive role in the fight against an autoimmune disease. Conversely, in the event of abandonment, it becomes negative. Abandonment is a real aggression, the most dangerous and perverse, because it leaves no visible trace.
It is in this sense that the two themes, leukemia and the killings in Brabant, combine in Since you left. It is less a question of telling the agony and death of a sick person, than of a quest for the truth, through a common thought, visual rather than verbal: that which resulted from the communication of Marjorie's unconscious and mine, during her coma.
At the circuit (Short, 2021)
Synopsis
Every weekend, Anne and Jeff go to the Mettet motorcycle circuit. A racing driver, Jeff is training. Anne records his laptimes. Occasionally, at the Au Circuit café, she negotiates fiercely over the phone for the loan of the motorcycle. Anne's gaze then meets that of Jacques, a client who, like his sidekick René, is part of the furniture. They never exchange a word. One day, Jacques sets off. He joins Anne at the bar...
Trailer
Au Circuit is the output of hazardous circumstances, miraculous encounters, adventurous intentions... Very favorable weather too, as well as a fortune "which only favors the daring". In these strange circumstances, a strange film was born.
The four characters who occupy our attention for fifteen minutes are profound antisocials, who, in other people, seek their ability to entertain or serve... Everybody manipulates and/or is manipulated.
Relationships
Every Sunday the ritual is the same. Entering café Au Circuit, Anne has the usual effect on Jacques. Sitting at a nearby table, he no longer listens to René's rambling. He thinks of her, and his gaze wanders in her direction.
Anne, on the phone, negotiates a small deadline for the loan of the motorbike, and gets it. Outside, sitting on his Kawasaki, Jeff, his master and lover, waits.
For his part, Jacques, having overcome his fear, gets up and approaches Anne. But she hardly notices it.
This time again, his obvious yet noble ugliness ridiculed him.
Routine takes over. Jeff rushes off at two hundred an hour, trying to nibble a few tenths. Anne takes the times and her time, submerged by languor and a deep boredom.
From comedy to tragedy
This film came about as a series of creative impulses.
Passing daily in front of this dismal and endearing circuit, on my way to Jambes, where I am a conscientious objector to a community TV, I cannot help populating this deserted place with characters from a Shakespearean drama.
In Jambes, where I shot portraits of local artists, I met Jacques and René, and became attached to these inglorious creators, determined to carry out their work despite the indifference of the Jambois.
I liked the vital impulse and uncommon strength that pushed them towards creation in an irrepressible way.
So I wrote a first script draft tailored to René and Jacques...
These two characters were embodied, and well. But I had not a plot yet, nor Anne and Jeff.
Anne's infinite loneliness. Confined in the stands, she starts to move briefly only when the Kawa lands and Jeff takes note of his laptime. One day, she realizes that her place is not in the stands. That an existence reduced to the transmission of numbers is futile and unliveable... The following events had to happen some day.
Illustrated filmography of Olivier
Click the smiley to watch J..P. Marielle interviewed on RtBF
Borges, blind and visionary, essay, 26'. Visual commentary on "The Library of Babel", by Borges. A sort of recap of my all-too-brief stay in Buenos Aires, at the BAFICI festival, 2022.
Since you went away (Depuis que tu es partie). Documentary-fiction, 2022, 120 min. In post-production.
Note: Masks, Since you went away 1 & 2, and Flammable Film will be proposed as a serie to be broadcasted in that order, in four 60 min. episodes.
Flammable Film
Documentary feature, 2020, 76 min.
Is there a life before dead ? The answer is in Flammable Film.
Masks (Masques)
Documentary feature, 2016, 64 min.
The saga of Olivier's family, struggling for freedom from years 1600 to 1945.
"Un très bel essai qui a certainement exigé beaucoup de courage”. Henri Roanne-Rosenblatt, novelist, Media program founder.
Off limits (Hors limites), documentary feature about Jaco Van Dormael, 56’, 2011.
“Intelligent et passionnant", Anne Feuillère, Cinergie.
Rondo, fiction, L.M., 90’, 2010, 35 mm. Sél. Sao Paulo; Busan ; FFDM Montréal, etc.
"... perfectly produced, both stylistically and narratively". Elisabeth Kerr, Hollywood Reporter.
Click the eye to watch Olivier interviewed by Dimitra Bourras (Cinergie)
Making of Rondo, 2010, 37', documentary, HD.
"A masterly produced making-of". Agathe Natanson, actress.
Darkness (Noir d’encre), fiction, 15’, 2006, 35 mm.
Sextuor, documentary, 32', 2005, Betacam. Production : les Films Maelström.
Continental Drift (La dérive des continents) 13', essay, 2004.
Production : Les Films Maelström.
"I don't deserve my prize, Continental Drift might have received it instead". The laureate of short film section at Ecrans Documentaires 2004.
Léa's voice (Une fille de joie), 22', 35 mm, 2002, fiction. Prime à la qualité du CCFWB. 9 prizes, 50 international sélections.
"To complete watching Une fille de joie is to know that the poignant juxtaposition between perception and reality has been achieved to near perfection". Simone Ling, in « The short skinny », Los Angeles, spring 2003
The hanged dog tree (L’arbre au chien pendu), 13’30'', 2001, 35 mm, fiction. 7 prizes, 55 international selections. Prime à la qualité du CCFWB.
"The violence, the power, the mastery of your film lead us to write you our admiration. Writing a story through images is to move us long enough for the world to rediscover its grace through your eyes". Robert Bensimon, actor and director, by letter.
Photography
"Who is this phenomenon?" (Isaïe Disenhaus, professor at INSAS, discovering Olivier's test results).
Olivier passed the admission tests at INSAS, Belgian national film school, with the maximum score for each of them. After that, he successfully completed all the photographic projects "cum maxima laudes". Since then, he never stopped photographing. Discover his work in a series of albums published monthly HERE =>
Writings
Foreword of Storyless cinema (Un cinéma sans histoire), essay taken from Film unity, Ph. D. thesis defended in philosophy (film aesthetics) at ULB in 1994.
Avant propos de l'essai tiré de L'unité du film, thèse défendue à l'U.L.B. en 1994 en Philosophie (esthétique du film).
Storyless cinema (Un cinéma sans histoire), essay. A phenomenological approach of film. French, translation in progress.
Un cinéma sans histoire, essai tiré de L'unité du film, thèse de doctorat défendue en 1994 à l'ULB (grande distinction).
Analyse: “Les glaneurs et la glaneuse”, d’Agnès Varda.
Analyse: Dramaturgie de “Searching for Sugarman”, de Malik Benjelloul
Analyse: “Mort à Vignole”, d’Olivier Smolders.
Analyse: la reconnaissance.
Analyse: La vie des autres, de Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
L’articulation sonore/visuel.
Philosophie: Animalité, Humanité, Déité (1)
Philosophie: Animalité, Humanité, Déité (2)
Leurre qu'il était hier.
Analyse: Shoah, de Claude Lanzmann
Article: Leurre qu'il était hier.
Article: L'écriture de Toto le Héros.
Article: Providence, d'Alain Resnais.
Article: La moitié d'une image.
Article: Survivances.