Centenary Celebrations

This little film is part of the 35 reports that Henri Storck recorded during the summer of 1930 as official cinégraphiste of the city of Ostend. Trains de plaisir was another report of this kind. These two regional news reports were shown during the Congrès du Cinéma Indépendant in Brussels, in November 1930.

This was the model and framework for what would later be developed in Fêtes de Belgique, the taste for festive folklore, and the desire to capture an historical and sociological snapshot of society that nobody, at that time, cared to document. This is a raw document. Henri Storck saw the mixture of civil and religious, of parade and procession. The wild people in raffia skirts, the troops in uniform, the brass bands, the young girls disguised as angels, and the sturdy couples at popular balls follow one another in the magnificent fantasies of a nation revealed through a very lively montage. A mundane bass drum comes just before an ethereal statue of the Virgin Mary, the bishop under his canopy blesses the sea with all the constitutional bodies of the state, while the strollers and kids have fun elsewhere. A series of simple and powerful shots show the unconscious of a country captured by a filmmaker who was the seismograph of this festive agitation. It is through the medium of his eye that we can see it today.

Report : Henri Storck

35mm/B and W/silent/8’/1930

To wach the film please send an email to info@fondshenristorck.be, ask the password and click here