LORSQUE LE BATEAU DE LÉON M. DESCENDIT LA MEUSE POUR LA PREMIÈRE FOIS

A black-and-white video introduced by the brothers (looking like long-haired radicals) that revisits key people and places in Seraing’s workers demonstration for health insurance in 1960. In a truly Dardenne spirit, a montage foregrounds the manual labor involved in building the boat of Léon (a participant in the original demonstrations), people are introduced by their trades and locations, and the narration draws enough potent metaphors about truth-seeking and the flow of history from the boat’s journey that one wonders if it alone later inspired the name of their production company, Les Films du Fleuve.