Belgium / France

Esprit de Bière
(Beer)

Dark or light, beer exalts and numbs. It inevitably leads to big talk or big hangovers. It unifies and divides. It sums up gestures, desires and failures.
Beer, we return to it and absorb it. In us, it is transformed and it transforms us in turn. It engenders minuscule utopias, lasting one night. In a certain manner, it also sums up the strange relationship we have to things, to the world: we swallow it without really knowing what it is and what it is composed of. It is at the same time a clear and a confusing substance. Essay in liquid archaeology blending outsider pedagogic and the search for self, Beer leads its investigation of this golden beverage as a commissioner would of a crime. Beer is thus first analyzed as a substance, as matter (real, chemical, physical...). Then, its cycle becomes the object of particular attention. Cycles that address man in his desires for bonds and exchanges. Cycles which remind us how-even beer-may be a matter of (self) contemplation.

Filmography:
1991: Un pò di febbre
1993: Sottovoce
1995: De bouche à oreille
1997: Tableau avec chutes
1997: Panamarenko : portrait en son absence
1997: La complainte du progrès