Jan Bucquoy
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Jan Bucquoy (b. November 16, 1945) is an anarchist and author-filmmaker born in Harelbeke, Belgium.
After his studies in Strassburg (theatre) and Brussels (Insas) he started his career as an author of about 50 comics: ((Daniel) Jaunes, Le Bal du Rat Mort (1986), Retour au pays noir, Alain Moreau, etc...). With his producer Francis De Smet he made his much acclaimed series of The Sexual Life of the Belgians (with the famous trilogy) which includes 10 movies and documentaries about the whereabouts of Belgian people from the period after the war until now: the surrealist Camping Cosmos (1996) with Lolo Ferrari and Jan Decleir, and with a parody (detournement) of Tintin and Snowy and of the play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder by Bertolt Brecht; The Closing down of the Renault Factory at Vilvoorde Belgium (1998) as a Belgian version of Roger & Me (1989) by Michael Moore; Les Vacances de Noël with Noël Godin and Yolande Moreau (2005) etc... His movies are a mixture of French avant-garde cinéma in the fashion of Jean-Luc Godard (La Chinoise (1967)), Italian neo-realism (Roberto Rossellini) and the humanism of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (f.i. Satansbraten (1976), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)), of whom he directed some theatrical plays (f.i.:The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant during his university studies at Strassburg).
His protagonists include celebrities looking for love, having reminiscences of their lost mother. The term "sexual" in his first movie La vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-78 means affectionate. Influenced by the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, he considers living in the 21st century to be a permanent theatrical performance. His work renders ridiculous the false seriousness of the media and its 'stars' who act as collaborators of this system of massive distraction. This is the reason why he is an accomplice of the entarteur Noël Godin of major figures of business as Bill Gates, culture: Bernard-Henri Lévy and politics: Nicolas Sarkozy and that he celebrates his yearly coup d'état of Belgium as an art performance or happening just like his musée du slip. This does not mean that he takes politics seriously: his movie La vie politique des Belges (2002) with Benoit Poelvoorde for instance, makes fun of the two minuscule opposing political parties in the race for votes: Tarte, and Vivant with the Belgian millionaire Roland Duchâtelet.
His films contain many references to the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and one of his movies has even taken a title by one of the books of the pupils of Lacan: La jouissance des hystériques by the psychiatrist Lucien Israël. He was influenced by the artist Marcel Mariën and the writer Raoul Vaneigem (The Book of Pleasures).
Films
- La Vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-1978 (1994)
- Camping Cosmos (La vie sexuelle des Belges II) (1996)
- Crème et châtiment aka Entartement de Toscan du Plantier au festival de Cannes 1996 / Cream and Punishment (short film) (1997)
- Fermeture de l'usine Renault à Vilvoorde (1998)
- La Jouissance des hystériques (La vie sexuelle des Belges IV) (2000)
- Vrijdag Visdag / Friday Fishday (La vie sexuelle des Belges V) (2000)
- La vie politique des Belges: Tarte ou Vivant (2002)
- La société du spectacle et ses commentaires (La vie sexuelle des Belges VI) (2003)
- Les Vacances de Noël (2005)
- De laatste verleiding der Belgen (2022)
