Henri Storck

An UN produced French documentary attempting to illustrate the many causes of juvenile delinquency with particular reference to adverse environmental influence.

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This surreal abstract film falls into three sections, or movements, the first taking place on the ground, the second in the air and the third again on the ground. In the first movement various motifs or themes are introduced, which are again picked up and developed in the third movement. Six spheres, evolved in the first movement, become the sole subject matter–or “dancers”–of the second movement, which consists of a simple type of ballet using the floor-plan choreography or traditional ballet as a basis of interest.

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This was Henri Storck first art documentary, a portrait about the painter, Paul Delvaux.

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A family film, a short summer film, made to record the joy of being together. But what a family! Léon Spilliaert, Paul Delvaux, Edgar Tytgat and his wife Maria, Luc and Paul Haessaerts. A garden, some seats and a camera that films the group of friends. They talk (given all the jollity, laughter and gestures seen it is a shame that it is a silent film). A period document only a few minutes long, a witness that puts names to faces, a reminder of a sunny afternoon. Emotion that loses itself in the moment.

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From 1942 to 1944, Henri Storck composed his Symphonie paysanne, in which he describes the day to day life and rituals of the farmers on the rhythm of the seasons. The film is a poem to nature, a lyrical masterpiece on life and death, on animals and plants, on man and his labour.

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A day-of record of 30 December 1938 as Belgium mourns Emile Vandervelde—“the Boss”—with massed corteges, banners, and eulogies for the Belgian Labour Party leader, statesman, and pillar of international socialism.

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This trailer for the pleasures of living between La Panne and Le Zoute testifies to the post-1936 euphoria that came with paid holidays, with sun and rest for everybody.

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Henri Storck’s militant short on Depression-era Belgium, set in Walloon slums on the outskirts of a prosperous city. Staged vignettes expose substandard housing, overcrowding, and numbed survival through claustrophobic, frame-filling images; a coda on slum clearance and “garden city” rehousing offers guarded hope.

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The first Easter Island documentary, filmed in 1935 when the Belgian naval ship Mercator came to collect Drs. Henri Lavacherry and Alfred Métraux, who had arrived six months before to carry out archaeological and ethnological work. The film, directed with melodramatic gusto and featuring a full orchestral score by Maurice Jaubert (who also did the narration), shows islanders, the monuments, and a public dance. A theme of decay and decadence characterizes the film, the motif portrayed gruesomely by extensive close-ups of the inhabitants of the leper colony there at the time. The film suited a romantic image of a mysterious lost civilization, the survivors eking out a pitiful existence on a barren rock. (Grant McCall)

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Henri Storck and Joris Ivens’ landmark of social documentary, blending staged scenes with locals and on-the-spot reportage to depict the 1932 miners’ strike in Belgium’s Borinage—evictions, hunger, and police repression—transforming outrage into a call for solidarity.

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A 1934 documentary by Henri Storck.

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A montage of images from newsreels; Storck's edit contains comical, poignant, even chilling juxtapositions.

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Built from 1928 newsreels—the year 60 nations vowed to outlaw war—Storck’s razor-edged montage mocks the era’s self-congratulation by cross-cutting speeches and parades with portents of renewed violence: nationalism, colonial repression, police brutality. Slow-motion collapsing chimneys and the exhumation of an “unknown soldier” give the satire its sting.

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On Ostend’s North Sea shore, a sudden squall pushes two strangers under a bathing hut; when the sun returns, their flirtation blossoms into a playful, near-wordless seaside idyll of sand, surf, and shells.

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A lyrical promotion of Belgium’s North Sea coast that alternates teeming promenades and playful beach games with elegant seafront vistas; shot by John Fernhout and set to Marcel Poot’s score, with commentary by Éric de Haulleville.

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A montage drawn from 35 reports Henri Storck filmed in 1930 as the city’s official cinegraphiste. The film celebrates Ostend as a place of joy and vitality—by day and night a city of beaches and parties, of sports, games, and the special pride of belonging to this seaside resort.

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Departing Ostend for the North Sea grounds, a fishing boat casts its herring nets until a drift into French waters prompts a boarding by the coast guards—a brisk portrait of hard work at sea and the thinness of a maritime border.

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The beach and the bathers, poses and gestures. A series of sketches and portraits, little touches that build up into a wry, affectionate portrait of a Sunday at the beach.

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Structured in visual chapters: the port, anchors, the wind, the spray, the dunes, the North Sea… A series of images that need no anecdote or explanation. Storck offers a glimpse of Ostend, aspects that order its multiple constitutive elements; The water, the sand, the waves, vital cinematic language displayed in simple pictures. A poetic and kinetic shock, without fiction or sound, which relieves film from its narrative obligation and restores it to the world of sensations that it can alone carry.

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"Pour vos beaux yeux" (For Your Beautiful Eyes) is an eight-minute surrealist short by Henri Storck, conceived from an idea by Félix Labisse. In just 75 shots, it follows a young man who discovers a glass eye in a park, becomes consumed by its strange allure, and tries in vain to rid himself of it by mailing it away. Featuring Henry Van Vyve in the lead role, with cameo appearances by Labisse and his sister Ninette, the film stands as a playful yet unsettling exploration of obsession and absurdity—released only a year after "Un Chien Andalou."

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A silent seaside vignette from Henri Storck: weekenders (“day-trippers”) descend on the Belgian coast for brief escape—bathing huts, crowds, and playful beach routines rendered in quick, observational fragments.

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Henri Storck: “The General Commissariat for Tourism had organized a ‘Year of Folklore’ and, on that occasion, asked me to make a series of films devoted exclusively to this form of popular culture.” 1.Carnaval van Oostende - 2.Vastenavond te Aalst - 3.Carnaval van Malmédy - 4.Straattoneel in Malmédy - 5.De Gilles van Binche - 6.Meiboomplanting en Passiespel door de marionetten van Toone in Brussel - 7.Heilige Bloedprocessie in Brugge - 8.De 'witte Moussis' van Stavelot en de kermis van Bergen - 9.Passiespel in Lessen en Ligny. Halfoogst-feesten in Outre-Meuse (Luik) - 10.De Chinels van Fisse-la-Ville. De 'Grootjes' van La Louvière. Het ontploiffen van Kruipotten in Luik.

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Documentary directed by Henri Storck. The film follows several groups of tourists on a visit to different sites in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. The groups tours with buses of the Ostend Department of British Travel (British Traval Office Ostend).

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