The Cinema section will offer guests (signing sessions, meetings with the public, conferences), a fantasy short film festival and screenings of Japanese anime.

Guests of Honour: Brian & Wendy Froud

Meet Brian Froud: guest of honour of the festival and artistic director of two cult movies: The Dark Crystal (1982) and The Labyrinth (1986), directed by the creator of the Muppet Show, Jim Henson. Brian Froud will introduce these two movies which have inspired a whole generation of fantasy lovers, and will certainly continue to do so. The two movies will be screened at the festival.

Brian Froud is also a celebrated illustrator, and his work will be shown at the exhibition. Please go to the relevant section for more information.

The Dark Crystal

Once upon a time, in another world… Jen and Kira, sole survivors of their kind, the Gelflings, go on search for a shard of the crystal. According to the prophecy, they are the only one to be able to return this gigantic crystal, worshipped by the cruel Skekses, to its original state and hreby save the world…

Jim Henson is without doubt the master of puppet animation and animatronics. After becoming famous on television in the early 70s with the Muppet Show, he turns to cinema in 1982 with Dark Crystal, a masterpiece of Fantasy with a cast of puppets exclusively. The result is mesmerising: magic and fantasy are ever-present and make you forget that these character are not made of flesh and blood. Although the film may appear to be a simple Good vs Bad story for children, with the gentle Gelflings and the horrible Skekses, it still appeals to an moe adult audience.

The Labyrinth

A young, romantic girl feels bad at home and flees into the imaginary world of fairy tales. One night, her favourite book, "The Labyrinth", opens the doors to another world. Sarah sees her younger brother Toby kidnapped by a gang of gnomes obeying the seductive and cruel Jareth. She goes to rescue the boy and enters into the labyrinth that leads to the palace of the kidnapper…

Directed in 1986 by Jim Henson, Labyrinth is an excellent fairy tale in the line of The Wizard of Oz. The young Jennifer Connely is magnificent, and David Bowie totally kitsch and colourful. The settings are wonderful and the characters, even though puppets, are again as charming as (if not more than) the human actors. Labyrinth is a movie that will fascinate both children and adults who have not forgotten they were, once, children.

Short Films Festival and Troll & Légendes award

If you want to enter your short film for screening, please see bottom of the page.

A selection of the best French speaking fantasy and magic realism short films will be screened on big screen. The short films will also take part to a contest, with two prizes to be awarded: the Fantastique.Net prize, awarded by the cinema jury of the webzine Lefantastique.Net, and the prize of the audience, awarded, of course, by the audience.

The programme will be posted a few weeks before the festival.

 

Anime screenings

Japanese cartoons, or anime, are growing in popularity and represent an important part of modern fantasy. That is why the first episode of de best present-day anime series will be screened on a big screen at the festival.

Naheulbeuk: la série TV

The Mortal Fight Circus (MFC) started as a bunch of friends, role-playing and movie aficionados, who, in 1999, started filming and producing amateur parody movies (Mortal Kombat, The Beach, Romeo+Juliet, LOTR…)

In 2008, MFC became an "asbl" dedicated to pomoting young talents (actors, technicians, scriptwriters, musicians…) through the shooting or animation of fiction written by the association, in Belgium and abroad. At the moment, their big project is the video adaptation of the audio (and novel and comic book) saga of John Lang, "Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk".