{"id":283,"date":"2003-11-11T02:13:20","date_gmt":"2003-11-11T09:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=283"},"modified":"2003-11-11T02:13:20","modified_gmt":"2003-11-11T09:13:20","slug":"about-antwerp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/11\/about-antwerp\/","title":{"rendered":"About Antwerp"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Stockholm International Film Festival<\/a> is nearly upon us again. This year there is a Belgian film showing, Any Way the Wind Blows<\/em><\/a>, about nothing much happening in Antwerp. Sound less than thrilling, but before nixing it I checked it out on IMDB. It rates about as high there (7.4) as the best Belgian films I knowC’est arriv\u00e9 pr\u00e8s de chez vous<\/em><\/a> (Man bites dog), a mockumentary masterpiece, gets 7.5. The Dardennes’ La Promesse<\/em><\/a> manages 7.4 and their Cannes winner Rosetta<\/em><\/a> but 6.9. I honestly can’t think of many more Belgian movies with arthouse appeal.<\/span>, and it is being praised for its visual acuity.<\/p>\n

I immediately knew what the reviewers meant when I saw this still:<\/p>\n

\"vermeernew.jpg\"<\/p>\n

It reminded me of this near neighbor<\/a>, working in the 17th century:<\/p>\n

\"vermeerold.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Antwerp is an immensely creative city, probably the best in its class, and yet one third of the population votes for the anti-immigrant Vlaams Blok. So I have a love\/hate relationship with the place; my Antwerp dialect — my mother tongue — is a passport to acceptance by the locals; it’s probably the only place in the world where I can manage that trick. But because this accent is the kind of ethnic marker Vlaams Blok uses to define outsiders, and because in my case I too am an outsider, having lived there just one year as a child, I am acutely aware of the fallibility, and hence silliness, of such tests, and policies based on them.<\/p>\n

All this implies I care about the place. I will go see the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stockholm International Film Festival is nearly upon us again. This year there is a Belgian film showing, Any Way the Wind Blows, about nothing much happening in Antwerp. Sound less than thrilling, but before nixing it I checked it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-4z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}