Here and There – The Films of Bas Devos

The Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos (*1983) makes a cinema that does not function by striving for dramatic peaks, but with precisely framed images sketches the movements and encounters of individual people in a Brussels characterized by migration. He explores the city from the margins. This reveals his eye for the beauty of the city and nature as well as his interest in the social realities of urban life and work in a center of the Western world. Bas Devos always places his figures in relation to spaces, the public space as well as their private living spaces. Silent images of interiors pervade his films. He explores the spatial relationship between inside and outside with recurring camera angles that observe life behind the illuminated windows of a house or an apartment from the street. A preference for night shots characterizes his cinema just as much as the 4:3 format and unusually designed credits, which, to a certain extent, distinguish the films as teamwork.

Bas Devos has attracted international attention with his specific style of storytelling - starting with the Berlinale, where three of four feature-length films made between 2013 and 2023 premiered, another premiered in Cannes. Arsenal's retrospective now offers the opportunity to take a closer look at his artistic project through the films that react to one another, and to discuss this with the filmmaker himself, who will be our guest at the opening on September 26 & 27. (Birgit Kohler)

An event with the kind support of the Delegation of Flanders / Embassy of Belgium.