Sirene (1968)

Director:

Raoul Servais

Writer:

Raoul Servais (writer)

Genre:

Short | Animation

Plot:

Monsterlike cranes reign over an inhospitable harbour as prehistorical reptiles. The only human being they accept is a lonesome fisherman. He is to witness a strange encounter between a ship's mate and a mermaid. Imagination or reality? |

Also Known As:

Sirène (Belgium: French title)

Runtime:

9 min

Country:

Belgium

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Certification:

Belgium:KT

Company:

Absolon Films

carcass of a declining industrial universe

quoting from Philippe Moins and Jan Temmerman's book called a painter-filmmaker's journey:

after `chromophobia`'s narrative lead with drums beating, `Sirene` looks like a much less linear, more meandering, atmospheric and poetic film, even if the context to which it refers has links with society and its defects... everything here is more nervous, faltering with black edges, much like the pteranodons which dominate the scene with their heavy flight... the only notable presence, a little fisherman, brings back nothing but fish-skeletons in his baskets, and the entire city, with its cranes and its mooring cables, appears like a pile of nets and fish-bones, carcass of a declining industrial universe... as an idyll between eerie representations (a bow ofa ship and a siren), `sirene` was perceived as an early denouncement of the degradation of the environment. today, the film comes to us both as a poem dedicated to freedom and as a sarcastic vision of the order imposed by human society.