DOKU.ARTS
Zeughauskino Berlin
10.09.–12.10.2014
Lucien Hervé, photographe malgré lui
Lucien Hervé (1910–2007) is considered one of the world’s most influential photographers of architecture whose images inspired photographers and architects alike. As Le Corbusier’s in-house photographer and friend, his photographs became famous and would sometimes exude a greater poetry than the buildings themselves. He travelled the world with Le Corbusier who saw in Hervé “the soul of an architect”. He also took photographs for architects such as Marcel Breuer, Oscar Niemeyer, Avro Aalto and artists like Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger. In Gerrit Messiaen’s sensitive portrait, Hervé gives an insight into his artistic way of working as a photographer and painter as well as his editing technique and looks back at his turbulent life: In 1940 Laszlo Elkán, as he was born, fled Hungary escaping from an East-Prussian prisoner of war camp and joined the Résistance in Grenoble in 1941. Before that he was, amongst other things, a fashion designer and a Communist. After the end of the war, many further milestones are testament to the exceptional social and artistic life of an extraordinary man.
Gerrit Messiaen
Gerrit Messiaen, born 1964 in Kortriyk, studied communication, film and political sciences at the University of Ghent and Brussels. After an apprenticeship as screenwriter with the VRT television fiction department, he worked two years as a producer for Frans Buyens and Lydia Chagoll. In 1996 he realised with Robert Visser A journey with Paul Cox, a documentary portrait of the Australian filmmaker, which was shown at various international film festivals.
In 1998 Gerrit Messiaen realised a short documentary The dance of Roberte. Until my last Breath a portrait of the Belgian film director Frans Buyens was awarded best Belgian documentary at the Brussels Film Festival 2000.