Belgian Delirium was made from the original film known as Our Sovereigns in Brazil, footage shot by two military cameramen, sergeants of the Belgian army, who accompanied the trip of King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth to Brazil in 1920. The digitized version of the original nitrate film was provided by the Royal Belgian Film Archive to the Film Archive of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ) and screened during the Rio Desaparecido Film Showcase, held in partnership with Rio Memórias.
Belgian Delirium emerges from the process of watching and rewatching, countless times, the images of the Belgian monarchs' trip, especially those recorded aboard the battleship São Paulo and in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It seeks to establish a dialogue between fragments of Our Sovereigns in Brazil and articles about the trip published by the Brazilian press of the time, cartoons in popular magazines, iconographic material, and recent academic works. It is a work of describing the filmed footage, pausing, repeating, and uncovering sonic, gestural, and temporal layers. Gabriel Falcão's soundtrack greatly enhances the reflective and sensory movement of the editing, which draws emotion, fragments of memory, and imagination from the visual document. The short film shows what is in the images – whether within the frame or beyond it – but is not immediately visible and requires a more attentive look. In this process, it identifies elements that haunt the images of the city of Rio, which dreamed of one day becoming like the white European metropolises.
Read Fred Coelho's essay about the film "Delírio Belga" here
