13/12/2005

The Belgian Documentary Film Panorama organised by the Henri Storck Fund awarded on Monday the Henri Storck Prize to Marie Mandy, Voir sans les yeux. Produced by Saga Film, Voir sans les yeux, a voyage into the mental universe of blindness, already won the Europa Prize for Best Documentary, at Berlin in 2004.

Henri Storck bestowed the honour on Belgian documentary in 1933 thanks to the mythic Misère au Borinage filmed with Joris Ivens. The Henri Storck Fund, which aids the restoration and broadcast of these works of filmmakers dear to him (Henri d'Ursel, Pierre Alechinsky, David Mc Neil...) was created in 1995. This panorama, which screens to the public for twelve days around thirty films documentaries produced in the last two years and honours, according to Storck: "a work uncovering or discovering an aspect of reality in a powerful and original manner, a work which constitutes according to the words of Jean Vigo a documented therefore critical point of view".

This year, the jury, composed of Belgian documentary maker Patric Jean, English producer and director Paul Jenkins, Swedish Jean-Erik Lundström, exhibition administrator, Flemish critic Erik Martens and Pierrette Ominetti, assistant director of the documentary unit at ARTE France also honoured two other films among the twelve 12 films in competition : Linda and Ali, two worlds within four walls by Lut Vandekeybus, on the life of a couple between East and West, received the Belgian Documentary prize while Il fare politica – chronique de la Toscane Rouge (1982-2004) by Hugues Le Paige was attributed the Committed Film Prize, for a work which followed twenty years in the evolution of a political group of communists and friends.

(Translated from French)