Walking with «Here»: Expanded Cinema Along the Reuss

The format

The format of this expanded cinema experience consists precisely in expanding the cinematic experience of a film and its interaction with physical public space. We explore this interaction between the imagination emerging from the black box and the discovery of a specific place in the urban or natural landscape. Projecting the film experience out of the black box through public discussion, or bringing the experience of physical space into the film: both directions make the phenomenology of film and space explicit.

The experience

Stefan walks through Brussels and its surroundings, day and night, in an almost insomniac (and cinematic) state of daydreaming. He is a Romanian seasonal worker who has indefinitely delayed his departure back to Romania. This suspended time becomes a precious moment for unexpected encounters, such as the one with Liyo, a biologist of Chinese origin who studies mosses and offers Stefan the occasion for an important shift in perspective.
Such a transformative experience in Bas Devos’ film Here was anticipated through a walking experience with students of the Master Film programme at HSLU Lucerne, under the supervision of professor Fred Truniger, who collaborated in the organisation of the expanded cinema experience. We proposed a series of stops and reflections intended to convey a change of perspective on places that are seemingly part of the students’ everyday environment, along the axis between the HSLU building at the Viscosistadt Areal and the historic entrance to Lucerne from the Reuss.

The kick-off focused on the soundscape of the film while discovering a small sample of mosses. The resonance between macro- and microcosm, as well as an opening towards the sonic dimension of the environment, constituted the point of entry into the almost straight line of the Reuss. This apparently “functional” corridor between Emmenbrücke and Lucerne — where at least five transport routes (for pedestrians, bicycles, cars, trains, and highways) overlap — reveals a historical and biological density surrounding the overlooked line of the water, now mostly perceived as a leisure setting.

After observing beavers and birds, the perspective shifted sharply through the example of a creative reappropriation of the environment by the artists at Bildzwang. Meeting Matteo Laffranchi, we discovered his artistic practice and the preparation of a new collective exhibition, Im Fluss, often in literal interaction with the river and its surroundings. At a second stop, we met Simon Bärer from Stadtgrün Luzern, who introduced the perspective of urban vegetation and the conception of children’s playgrounds. This also became an occasion to reflect on the gentrification of places usually considered uninteresting due to their function as transport corridors. At the final stop with Raphael Meyer at Sentitreff, a house welcoming migrants and people from the neighbourhood, issues of migration were reconnected to the film and opened up a discussion about the relationship between urbanism and movement.

Further reflections

Without imitating the narrative of Here, the walk anchored the experiential nodes of the film in a specific territory that is usually perceived as self-evident and unremarkable, thereby enacting a similar transformative experience to the one proposed by the Belgian director for seemingly anonymous or marginal places in and around Brussels.

The discussion following the screening in the university cinema provided a fresh reading of the film, as well as an opportunity for the film students to imagine how a film may emerge from the experience of a territory through a decentred perspective, in which plants teach humans different ways of living and inhabiting the world.