Charles Dekeukeleire

Belgian film director

Charles Dekeukeleire (27 February 1905 – 2 June 1971) was a Belgian film director. He pioneered modern Belgian film with Henri Storck. He was inspired by French avant garde cinema, particularly the works of Germaine Dulac.

Dekeukeleire was born in Ixelles and died in Werchter. For his first film, Combat de Boxe, produced in 1927, Dekeukeleire staged a boxing match in his room based on a poem by Paul Werrie. Dekeukeleire recruited two professional boxers, one of which was the Belgian lightweight boxing champion. The abrupt changes of scale, the use of overprinting, and the use of very short shots alternating between the spectators and the fighters made this film unusually complex for the Twenties. He returned to this idea the following year with his masterpiece, Impatience, which is close to futurism. When it premiered, Charles Dekeukeleire stated that the gaze of the spectators must adapt, to let itself slip along with the film to feel the fragments of various lengths. The desire for physical contact with the machine is at the base of this film. In this drama with four characters (the Mountain, the abstract Motorbike, the Woman and the Blocks), the mechanical body, that of the Motorbike is strongly associated with the female body, first clothed and then naked with leather. Dekeukeleire exchanges parts between the two characters, resulting in a suggestive motorbike woman/woman motorbike. These two characters, the Motorbike and the Woman, then enter into interaction with the abstracted Mountain and Blocks, as if the director intended analogies between humanity, the animal world, the vegetable world and the mechanical world. In 1929, he filmed Histoire de détective, a surrealist inspiration. These first three avant garde silent films made his name in cinematography. His work then oscillated between documentaries and commissioned works. His work deals with race at times, for example in Terres brûlées (Burned Grounds, 1934), which chronicles an automobile journey through the Belgian Congo. Dekeukeleire made one hundred films in a career spanning four decades.

Dekeukeleire published articles in reviews such as 7 Arts, Nouvelle Team, and The Latest News. He is also the author of two books: The Social Emotion and The Film and Thought, Extra Light, Brussels, 1947.