Page 231 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

bit, body to body ... the first literally run up the stairs, paying no attention whatsoever to the giant
fresco and other fantastic art objects on display, and rush into the theatre to claim their seat. Soon the
theatre begins to fill, nervous laughter, a murmuring that slowly grows into a growl when the lights
finally switch off and a graveyard voice announces: Brussels International Festival of Fantasy, Thriller
and Science Fiction Film, Welcome...
Shrieks penetrate the theatre, 'Ta ta ta ta taaa', the film rolls, a voice yells: 'Tuer encore!' 'Jamais
plus!!' answers a choir of spectators. 'Les cochons de 1'espace!' 'Ta geule'... 1 It turns out to be a
recurring phenomenon. The ritual, so to speak, is repeated at the beginning of each screening at the
major venue. Throughout the film, the audience stays extremely responsive: the spectators applaud
the various guests; clap during the credits whenever a name they know appears; playfully warn
characters against the potential dangers awaiting them ('Don't go in there!'); and applaud again each
time a gory effect fills the screen. Even more, the whole theatre starts howling like a pack of wolves
whenever a full moon appears, there's the sound of kissing during romantic scenes, they're crying 'la
porte' whenever someone leaves a door to the theatre open...
For more than twenty years now, the Brussels Festival of Fantastic, Thriller and Science Fiction
Film (or, the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film, BIFFF) has built a firm reputation for
being one of the most popular film events in Europe, welcoming approximately 65,000 spectators plus
more than a hundred international guests. Above all, the Festival has a reputation for being great fun.
Few things are as funny as bad fantasy, horror or science fiction film, and as well as the best, BIFFF has
not been afraid to programme some of the worst, particularly late at night, to the great amusement of
a boisterous audience. Of course this is not the whole story; the Festival attendants are not to be seen
as one unified public but as a bunch of different spectators, bridging the line between age, gender and
taste. As a matter of fact, twenty years on, BIFFF still has a lot of its original attendance, but has at
the same time always managed to attract young people too, newcomers every year. Some people even
take their annual holidays to coincide with the Festival. Others are just there because they happened
to be in the neighbourhood and had nothing else to do.
In this chapter I shall try to examine this audience in greater detail, avoiding the trap of a
romanticisation of the festival public, but instead relating it to contemporary theories of audience

reception where viewing a film becomes an odd combination of distraction and appropriation.2
Instead of just reading movies, contemporary audiences now adopt movies, create cults around them,
tour through them. Applied to this Festival, the audience adopts 'genre', the boundaries of the genre
being not that easy to draw, not since the notion of a unified public is considered a reality no more.
Watching a film at the Festival is a cult film experience, one of the different viewing positions in a
more and more heterogeneous culture.
Therefore the festival public could be described as a cult audience, which is a difficult audience to
please. And, as one of the programmers of the Festival, I shall try to explain how we try to nourish this
cult, continuously coping with the ever-changing outlook of film in general and genre in particular.
A look in the internal kitchen shall lay bare the relations and even tensions between programming
and reception, trying to maintain so to speak a well-balanced mix between popularity and quality,
cult and kitsch, art house and grindhouse, while constantly being on the look for innovation, averse
to any trend.
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