Frans Buyens is a filmmaker Belgian Flemish born on 2 February 1924 in Thames ( East Flanders Province ) and euthanized , following a serious illness,In Jette ( Brussels ).
Biography
He was the companion of the dancer , choreographer, director and writer Lydia Chagoll . They made several films together.
Self-taught from a working class environment, he made numerous documentaries in the late 1950s , mainly for the BRT . He has also directed short and long fiction films.
Activist against militarism , racism and free-thinking , he wrote pamphlets , numerous political, literary and satirical writings. His films are committed.
In 1952 , he founded a satirical theater in Antwerp , Le Coq de Coivre and, in 1956-57, a satirical newspaper, Le Satan .
The RTBF co-produced one of the latest documentaries in six episodes common to the Buyens-Chagoll couple, titled Know Why .
Reached with a long, incurable illness, Frans Buyens chooses euthanasia to end his days and his pain.
Selective Filmography
- 1962 : Vechten voor onze rechten ( Fight for our rights ), 60 minutes, found footage editing on the general strike of winter 1960-1961 in Belgium
- 1973: Het dwaallicht
- 1982 : Tijd om gelukkig te zijn ( Time to be happy ), 100 minutes, 35 mm, fiction on unemployment , with Jan Decleir
- 1992 : Minder dood dan de anderen ( Less dead than the others ), 100 minutes, adapted from an autobiographical novel
- 2003 : Small white skin must bend its head in front of emperor Hirohito , 106 minutes, Beta digital, on the experiment of Lydia Chagoll , locked up in Japanese concentration camps in Indonesia , then Dutch colony.