Robbrecht Desmet

Rio, 16mm, color, without sound, 16'54", BE, 2013

Over a period of five years, Desmet made four films – although it could be three or five – in which he treads in the footsteps of another artist: those of Paul Cézanne as he painted Mont Sainte-Victoire and those of Bart Lodewijks as he was making chalk drawings in the cities. For the first two films – those that might also be three films – he travelled to Provence. For the last two – which are actually one – he went to Rio and to Ronse. These changes of location are important, as is his attention to the material: the filmmaker's reel of 16mm film, the attention to motion, sound and text in his images – those of the painter and the draftsman, the attention to textures and structures in their work. It is all fuel for a filmmaker who films as a critic: like a film critic and, through the choice of his subject, as an art critic.

Pieter van Bogaert