Misère au Borinage

Fintan Brady
Directed by Henri Storck
Joris Ivens
Written by Henri Storck
Joris Ivens
Edited by Helen van Dongen
Release dates
 1933
Running time
 36 minutes
Country Belgium
Language French, Dutch

Misère au Borinage is a 1933 Belgian documentary film directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens. It is considered one of the most important work of political cinema[1] and has been described as "one of the most important references in the documentary genre."[2]

The film opens with the words "Crisis in the Capitalist World. Factories are closed down, abandoned. Millions of proletarians are hungry!" and shows footage of the repression of a 1933 strike in Ambridge, Pennsylvania in the United States. The film then shifts to the Borinage region of Belgium during and after the general strike of 1932. The majority of the film focuses on the plight of Borinage coal miners who have been evicted from their houses and made unemployed following their participation in the strike and, in particular, the conditions in which they lived.

The Borinage is one of the most famous industrial regions of Wallonia (and of the classic industrial revolution in general) because of its history of hard and long social strikes, for instance, a two-month-long 1932 strike in this region, as well as Liège and Charleroi.

For Philip Mosley, this film is linked to the history of Wallonia: "Matters worsened in 1956 with the Marcinelle disaster, whose victims included many immigrants, and then with release of initial closure plans for Walloon mines. In scene reminiscent of Storck's Borinage film of 1933, social unrest in the area near Mons escalated into general strike of 1960 and 1961."[3] Robert Stallaerts about Storck, one of the directors of Misère au Borinage, said, "Although a Fleming, he can be called the father of the Walloon cinema." [4]

In 2000, a new documentary was made about the Borinage as a tribute to Storck: "Les Enfants du Borinage - Lettre à Henri Storck".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Patricia Aufderheide, Documentary film: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, 2007, p.79. ISBN 978-0-19-518270-5
  2. ↑ Misery in Borinage
  3. ↑ Philip Mosley Split Screen: Belgian Cinema and cultural Identity, Suny Press, New-York, 2001,p. 81. ISBN 0-7914-4747-2
  4. ↑ Historical dictionary of Belgium Scarecrow press, 1999, p. 191. ISBN 0-8108-3603-3

External links

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