Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Documentary produced and broadcast in the show "Court Circuit" on Arte.

Three no-budget semi-professional filmmakers finally get their due in this witty but respectful documentary. Director Frederic Sojcher visits three fellow Belgian auteurs whose ambitions outstrip their budgets, or their recognition. Max Naveaux is a projectionist who decided to take a stab at making movies himself, putting together small-scale war films whose realism was heightened by the fact that the Belgian Ministry of Defense gave him permission to use real bullets for one of his movies. Schoolteacher Jacques Hardy has dabbled in creating film noir, costume horror, and comic-book adventures, most starring his friend Christian Vranken, who makes his living as a church caretaker and insists on casting approval for his female co-stars. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a self-styled surrealist whose commitment to obscurity is great enough that he insists on being interviewed while wearing a ski mask.

The third and final film in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's trilogy L'histoire du cinéma 16 (The History of Cinema 16).

A cinematographic “cadavre exquis”, whose entrails reveal the odd nature of a (un)certain Belgian cinema. Authors, directors, actors who have proved that imposture could be an act of creation. Convinced that any so-called “new” cinematographic production was in fact a rehash of what had already been made, these pirates of images snuck as forgers, liars, tricksters, usurpers, … Outlaws of the cinema who falsified its form. From the filmed imposture of Man Bites Dog to Jan Bucquoy’s fabulist biopic, everything participates in the dynamiting of institutional language through simulacrum and absurdity. This free journey in the “cine-belgitude” has for vocation to approach these marvellous eccentrics followers of a overexcited and stripping situationism.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Early avant-garde horror short from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Early avant-garde horror short from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

A young woman commits suicide on her wedding day. Forty years later, her husband still lives in pain and despair, alone and losing himself to poetry books. One day, old and close to his death, he decides to leave his house and take one last action.

No synopsis available yet.

The incorrigible Stalinist Bolshevik Igor Yaboutich is determined to destroy the Christian West with the ultimate weapon of mass destruction: the atomic bomb! Charleroi, renamed Karminsky Grad for the occasion, is where this diabolical plan will be carried out. In the nuclear weapons factory, the sinister Vladimir Karminsky and Reinhard Heydrich rule with an iron fist. They mercilessly oppress the working class, who revolt and murder their bosses. Chaos breaks out. The situation seems uncontrollable for the Chinese, Arab, Russian, and German leaders, who are all united here against the Americans. Only Igor Yaboutich remains standing in this city of madness. Will he unleash a new world war?

No synopsis available yet.

The third and final film in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's trilogy L'histoire du cinéma 16 (The History of Cinema 16).

No synopsis available yet.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has just finished his last film, shot in unworthy conditions. He is preparing to show it to the movie critics of a local newspaper. The filmmaker launches the first images but these reveal all the problems that a non-professional filmmaker may encounter.

The husbands set out in search of their wives, who have been kidnapped by Doctor Loiseau and his accomplices. The latter is hiding in a secret hideout. Still assisted by Irene the hunchback, the charlatan doctor leads a team of workers tasked with producing bottles of the precious miracle elixir 'Force Unie'.

The husbands set out in search of their wives, who have been kidnapped by Doctor Loiseau and his accomplices. The latter is hiding in a secret hideout. Still assisted by Irene the hunchback, the charlatan doctor leads a team of workers tasked with producing bottles of the precious miracle elixir 'Force Unie'.

The owner of a café frequented by down-and-outs refuses to comply with the anti-smoking law (in Belgium, smoking has been banned in enclosed public places since July 1, 2011). On that day, a customer, Tony Belzébuth, fails to pay his bill. Olga refuses to serve him another beer until he has paid. Furious, he informs the REF (the Fair Fraud Investigation Unit) of all the misdeeds committed by the owner and going on in this sordid café.

The owner of a café frequented by down-and-outs refuses to comply with the anti-smoking law (in Belgium, smoking has been banned in enclosed public places since July 1, 2011). On that day, a customer, Tony Belzébuth, fails to pay his bill. Olga refuses to serve him another beer until he has paid. Furious, he informs the REF (the Fair Fraud Investigation Unit) of all the misdeeds committed by the owner and going on in this sordid café.

The film tells the story of a kind of depraved Dr. Mabuse who takes advantage of his status as a healer to kidnap women who come to consult him in the hope of being cured of various so-called female ailments.

Aloïs de Snefeler, a maniacal executioner, dotes on his companion. She goes by the sweet name of Louise and does her father, Dr. Ignace Guillotin, proud. At the widow's feet, heads roll. But not just any heads... The executioner's favorite prey is female. Thieves or adulteresses, magpies or impious women, peasant women or courtesans, they all end up with their heads in the basket. Around Aloïs, the ranks are thinning, but beware! ... He who cuts last cuts well!

Dr. Loiseau organizes bizarre screenings in a tent, assisted by a carnival barker, a hunchbacked nurse, a disgraced wrestler, and an ex-convict. Together, they devise ways to attract women by leading them to believe that the doctor knows the miracle cure for cervical and breast cancer.

Dr. Loiseau organizes bizarre screenings in a tent, assisted by a carnival barker, a hunchbacked nurse, a disgraced wrestler, and an ex-convict. Together, they devise ways to attract women by leading them to believe that the doctor knows the miracle cure for cervical and breast cancer.

In rural Belgium, a police inspector investigates a series of murders that may be connected to sinister supernatural forces.

Madness has reached its peak in Wallonia.

Denounced by a rival doctor, Dr. Loiseau is once again being pursued by the husbands of the women he kidnapped. He therefore instructs his son Victor to honor his appointments. Victor must meet Emir Azmir Krabouk, a criminal specializing in white slavery, on a sailboat. Jacques Ladrier, one of the husbands and a wealthy oil industrialist, is about to marry Angèle Jaucaut, his newly freed fiancée. Dr. Loiseau takes advantage of the ceremony to kidnap a few more women...