With Useful and Beats Of Love, the 7th ECU European Independent Film Festival (30 March- 1 April) in Paris gives a bill to two Flemish shorts. French-speaking Belgium is also represented at the fest with Filip Lamensch’s short dramedy About a Spoon.
Useful, directed by Inti Calfat, follows the struggles of an under-pressure couple. What happens when a woman can no longer prove intimately useful to herself or her husband? Although it deeply pains her, she encourages her husband to seek the comfort of another woman, a prostitute. Useful, starring Marijke Pinoy (Only One, Ben X) as the wife, was selected for the shortfilmcorner of the 2011 Cannes Festival and was nominated Best international experimental shortfilm at the New York Independent Film Festival 2011. The short was produced by Frederik Zaman and Mitchel Elsen for TRS.
Beats of Love is a school project by Wim Geudens of the MAD-Faculty of the KHLimburg university college. The 7-minute short film is about a man obsessed by sounds who plunges into the nightly city in search of the perfect beat that will allow him to win his sweetheart’s love. The film was a fully individual project, so Geudens was also responsible for cinematography, music and editing. Before falling under the ECU radar, the film received invitations for, amongst others, The Palace Short Film Festival in Balchik (Bulgaria), the Prague Fresh Film Fest and the Deep Fried Film Festival in Coatbridge, Glasgow.
ECU will give a stage to filmmakers whose films demonstrate quality, innovation and independence in both form and content. This highly esteemed competitive festival shows films from 13 categories. While ECU’s goal is to bring worldwide attention to European independent filmmakers, there are also five international categories open to filmmakers from the rest of the world.