Kamermeisjes (Sleep Out), 2000
FIFI LUZUALI
Sleeping is about relaxing. Thinking. Reflecting. Sometimes I fancy sleeping in these hotel beds. (laughs)
Synopsis: A portrait of Brussels as a metropolitan city of passage, with the hotel as a place of encounter and confrontation, of arrival, stay and departure. Seen from the perspective of a Brussels’ chamber maid, often an itinerant herself. She enters the intimate world of the traveller, and collects the traces he leaves in his room. Through her personal story and her own reality Kaat and Dorothée want to paint a picture of Brussels’ versatility. This portrait is realized as an installation with a large number of photos linked to texts.
Cast: Kirsti Richt * Amel Ayed * Fifi Luzuali * Kadishe Islami * Maria Spano * Fatima Bitar.
Year:2000 | Length:30’| format:DCP |
Language:French & English | Subtitles:Dutch & Eng
Screenplay: Dorothée van den Berghe
Kaat Van Doren
Directors: Dorothée van den Berghe
Kaat Van Doren
DOP: Dorothée van den Berghe
Editor: Vallyn Leroy
Production: Brussel/ Bruxelles 2000,
PLAIZIER
Producer: Michaël Greweldinger
Festivals:
Belgium: The festival of Brussels 2000’
Press:
De Standaard:
“In this Brussels of passers-by, contacts are fleeting and banal. As are some of the stories: how many minutes per room their schedule gives them, whether customers greet them, that men are cleaner than women, Chinese often dirtier than Iraqis, that many travellers lose one shoe, never two. But then the stories surface, goodbyes, war, uprooting, death, individual stories to world tragedies. It shows how small the step is between the banal and the tragic".
Le Soir:
"Women of the shadows, they practice the art of the bed in every corner and with sparkling plumbing. As you leave your well-appointed room, they invest the space, aspirating morsels of intimacy: each transient lodging harbors a secret tale, hosting a nationality serving a particular purpose. From host to host, they draw a map of intimacy, of indifference, or of the ephemeral. In the rotunda of the Ravenstein gallery, beloved transitional space of commuters, Dorothee van den Berghe and Kaat van Doorn's installation borrows the master key of these ladies, revealing the reality of certain hotels as microcosms of the metropolis."
