Dave's great idea

DAVE'S GREAT IDEA

dirk de hooghe
rudy trouvé

Rudy has a love for cinema. In art collegue he studied animation, which is obviously a form of cinema, but he has been seen dozens of times with a video or super8 camera around antwerp, just shooting footage. He likes to to keep an 'archive' of filmed material, but so far, only one 'finished' product has emerged from his urge to film.
And I use the term 'finished' in the widest meaning of the word. To some, Rudy's first film may look like nothing more than a series of amateuristicly filmed sequences. And in a way, these people are most definitely right. Together with his old classmate and friend Dirk De Hooghe, Rudy directed a 50-minute experimental videofilm in '96, shot in a day or two-three, with no budget whatsoever. The most expensive part of the film must have been the cost of videotape and super8-film, and the price of two coffees in a café. The film also lacks any sign of a story, trained actors, proper lighting or sound recording either. What remains is a joyful, improvised, freestyle film. To fit it into a genre is...challenging. The most obvious (yet probably incorrect) comparision might be the scandinavian dogma-school. Shaky camera work, natural lighting and sound, and I doubt many scenes took more than one take to shoot. In the end though, Rudy and Dirk have made the film they just liked to make at that time. They didn't try to make any profits out of it, nor did they have any technical background in shooting films, so in that prospect this film definitely is amateuristic.

The film itself stars the two Scotchmen Viking Dave Robertson and Craig Ward, who spend their days doing - basically nothing. They wander around Antwerp, maintaining slightly surreal conversations in a struggle against boredom. They discuss the easiest way to skin a puppy, shout Françoise Hardy! in the park, and compare washing products to each other.
It’s all very lo-fi, in a typical Rudy Trouvé-style; more attention to sheer pleasure and improvisation than to technical skills. The film is accompanied by a soundtrack provided by Lionell Horowitz and his Combo; the band toured for a while playing live music when the film was being projected. Most tracks from the film are as well on the Lionell Horowitz cd, apart from a minority of tracks. Here’s the soundtrack-tracklist:

small tv-tune
déjà vû*
zeppelin
l’hiver*
2-asses
used to work in a bakery*
le fred
les cheveux de françoise hardy
how to kill a puppy
diesel
4-children
forel
penguin

(The tracks marked with * are the ones not on ‘Au Bain Marie’. ‘Déjà Vû’ and ‘L’hiver’ are on the Lionell Horrowitz and his combo demo tape (although ‘L’hiver’ is a different version), and ‘Used to work in a bakery’ is simply Craig and Dave in a conversation, accompanied by a very quiet guitar.)

Again- because of Rudy’s refusal of paying much attention to technical perfection, the soundtrack isn’t integrated very well to the images, but that’s all part of ‘the plan’…
So far Rudy hasn’t got any plans on doing something with the video (like releasing it), but he said if something came up, he’d not be against using it for another project.

home