AV News 175 - February 2009
The Flanders Image Festival 2008
Colin Balls FRPS
The second Flanders Image
Festival took place over the
weekend of the 10th - 12th October
2008 in the small town of
Kortemark in Flanders. This is an
invitation event for International
AV workers, as well as an
opportunity to show the work of
the Kordial Multimedia Club
celebrating its 30th anniversary.
The club includes internationally known AV producers such as Johann
Werbrouck, Eric Kellens and Maurice and Liliane Dorikens, so the show that
they produced for the Friday evening was to the highest standard and
entertained a large audience including many local people.
Saturday was devoted to showing the 40 invited international AV’s (see
Issue 174 Page 40-41 for details) and on the Sunday, a Workshop on Wings
Platinum in the morning, was followed by a Gala Presentation in the
afternoon. For the British visitors (Robert and Maureen Albright, Edgar and
Linda Gibbs and Colin and Rhona Balls) a very
thought provoking trip to the WW1 Belgian Front and
the Trench of Death was organised and led by
Monique and Eric Kellens. Eric’s grandfather had
been injured whilst serving in the trench system and
Eric has done extensive research on the subject.
The whole weekend event was very well
organised. The De Beuk centre had 200 comfortable
tiered seats affording an excellent view of the 6
metre screen shown above. The image also shows the Logo for this event. I
was honoured to be asked if one of the images from my programme ‘The Last
Great Steam Show on Earth’ could be used, as it would be ideal for
communicating the theme for the event - that of a voyage around the world
by train. Between the Audio-Visual programmes short imaginative digital
video links on the Belgian railways were included to give a continuous
programme without breaks. This proved very successful. On the top left of
the image is a signal gantry, courtesy of Belgian Railways, which showed
different colours – green when an AV was about to run, orange when
announcements and speeches were in
progress and red before sessions started and
at the intervals. At the back of the hall were
the projection team with a mass of equipment!
It felt quite like the good old slide-tape days
with all the complexity!
I understand another event will happen in
two years. I can thoroughly recommend a visit
for an AV event with a difference.
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