WHO IS JAN BUCQUOY ?:

A brief item on last Wednesday's A-Infos perked Molly's interest. It was a report that Jan Bucquoy, an artist from Flanders in northern Belgium, had failed in his "third attempt at a coup d'etat" after he planted a red and black flag with the image of a banana in the gardens of the Belian Royal Place. His last "coup d'etat" attempt was in 2005 according to the report. He apparently had founded a "Banana Party" as a spoof on political parties and proposed that top government jobs be awarded by lottery. The report says that he is "famous for his cult comedy films and decapitating a statue of a former king in Brussel's renowned Grand-Palace". Still this whole thing is rather sketchy so, as a 'Molly service', here's "the rest of the story"....

Bucquoy was born on November 16th, 1945 in Harelbeke, Belgium. He later studied film and other arts in Strassburg and Brussels and on graduation he became a comic book artist, producing about 50 comics, including Jaunes, Bal du Rat Mort, Frenchy, Stone, Tintin-Pastiches, Parodies &Pirates, Retour au Pays Noirs, Alain Moreau and many others. The classic amongst these may be his detournement of Tintin. The prurient amongst my readers may be interested in the cover of same, not reproduced here but findable at the following list. For a further list of his comics see http://www.bedetheque.com/auteur-759-BD-Bucquoy-Jan.html .

Bucquoy later turned to film, and his credits include 10 movies and documentaries. He has taken many roles in these, as actor, director, producer, writer and cameraman, and has achieved a sort of cult following in Europe. Incomplete filmographies can be found at http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800258684 and http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=204017 . He has been influenced by French avant-garde cinema, Italian neo-realism and the German humanism of Fassbinder. His major influence, however, is situationalism, and his actions often shade into the sort of performance art meant as a detournement. Hence his repeated "coup d'etats" against the Belgian monarchy. He has been an accomplice of famous/infamous entarteur (pie thrower) Noel Godin whose "hits" have included Bill Gates, Bernard-Henri Levy and the new president of France Nicolas Sarkozy. Another influence is the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. One of his films takes the title of one of Lacan's books 'La jouissance des hysteriques' .

Many of his films are set in a continuation of a project that he began in 1994 with 'La Vie Sexuelle des Belges:1950-1978' (the sexual life of the Belgians) which explores the wanderings of people in his country in a quest for "affection", taking "sexual" in a much larger sense. To learn more about Bucquoy go to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0118809 at the Internet Movie Database, a Reuters' article on him at http://www.trashcity.org/WIRED/ODD010.HTM and, of course, the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Bucquoy .

So, as the radio says...that's the rest of the story.