Accompanying Melissa Gordon’s solo show at Vleeshal Markt, Vleeshal presented a film night devoted to French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin. Perhaps most known for his collaborations with Nouvelle Vague luminary Jean-Luc Godard, Gorin also made very interesting and inspiring movies of his own. Melissa Gordon has been a long-time fan, and selected two of his films for this film night at Vleeshal: Routine Pleasures (1986), after which she titled the Vleeshal show, and Poto and Cabengo (1980) on a pair of American identical twins who supposedly used a language of their own invention until they were about eight years old.

In a recent interview with Vleeshal director Roos Gortzak, Gordon talks about Gorin’s Routine Pleasures: “The film has been an influence for some years now, so I wanted to pay homage to it. In the film Gorin acts as a voyeur of two kinds of workers that he edits into one space: model train enthusiasts, and the painter Manny Farber in his studio (painting his studio tables!). In Routine Pleasures, labor is both maintenance and play: pleasure and work are collapsed, and this is what I wanted the title of the exhibition at the Vleeshal to reference". The evening was introduced by Vleeshal’s Assistant Curator Sophie Oxenbridge (in English).

Two films by Jean-Pierre Gorin
Routine Pleasures (1986), 79 min.
Poto and Cabengo (1980), 73 min.