How with precise material – contemporary pictures of the dried up Lake Aral – to create archives of the future, organize a narrative with the traces of a period which is not yet upon us but is already there. Something of a future cataclysm, a form of apocalypse.
La chamelle blanche is no so different from Solaris or La Jetée. The catastrophe has already occurred or is about to happen. Our sense of anticipation allows us poetic license, as the excerpts from the logbook which punctuates the film reveals, and which talks to us of the earth as an unknown planet, of the cosmodrome, of an area labelled H.D (Highly Dangerous).

Bertrand Bacquet – Visions du Réel – Nyon 2006

This beautiful and mysterious film is by one of Belgium's most talented and peculiar directors. It is a poetic journey into the border areas of the disbanded Soviet Union where imperial power is still intact, if only as an accompaniment to the dream-like soundtrack that is a backdrop to the film's mix of fiction and strange, documentational moments.

CPH:DOX ,catalogue, 2006

Visions du Réel, Nyon (Suisse), Jeonju International Film Festival (Sud-Corée), Etats Généraux du documentaire, Lussas (France), Exis Experimental Film & Video, Seoul (Sud-Corée), International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava (République Tchèque), International Film Festival of Frankfurt (Allemagne), Etnofilm, Cadca (Slovaquie), CPH:DOX (Danemark), Filmer à tout prix, Bruxelles (Belgique), Videomedeja festival (Serbie), Panorama of Independent Film Makers (Grèce), International Film Festival of Uruguay (Uruguay), ObjectifDoc, Paris (France), International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra (Espagne), Ybor Festival of the moving image, FL (USA), Sami Film Festival, Kautokeino (Norvège), European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck (Allemagne), Athens International Film + Video Festival, OH (USA), Festival Internacional del Cine Pobre, Gibara (Cuba), Festival Images mouvementées (ATTAC ), Paris (France), Rodos International Film and Visual Arts Festival –Ecofilms (Grèce), The independent Features Film Festival, New-York (USA), Yerevan International Film Festival, Yerevan (Arménie), Slow Film Festival, Eger (Hongrie), Thin Line Film Festival, TX (USA), International Documentary and Short Film Festival "Dokufest", Prizren (Kosovo), Rome International Film Festival, GA (USA), Mostravídeo, Belo Horizonte (Brésil), Les Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cerbère (France), Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (Suisse), Sichuan TV Festival, Sichuan (République de Chine), Mar del Plata International Independent Film Festival (Argentine),…

Ostrov www.ostrov-films.org | Wallonie Image Production www.ventes-cbawip-sales.be | Argos centre for art and media www.argosarts.org | Documentaire sur grand ecran www.docsurgrandecran.fr | Collectif Jeune Cinema www.cjcinema.org | and soon Doc.Net Films Editions www.docnet.fr

Le Goût du koumiz is a radical film, tinged with nostalgia, whose slowness and aesthetics captivate the viewer. The first enigmatic shots immediately create a special atmosphere. You are not going to see the world as it is but the way the filmmaker perceives it.
The sharply contrasting video images, rendered in black and white, help to give this narrative a dreamlike dimension. Some intuitively and carefully framed shots arouse some exceptional moments of purely cinematographic emotion. Thus the image of the helpless flight of a butter fly against the window of a hurtling train or that of a body picking itself up in a door way take on a rare intensity. Xavier Christiaens' intention is to divert images of reality to compose a serious and captivating dream. But if he was not deeply honest, would he succeed in this way in capturing the beauty of those whom he films?

Yann-Olivier Wicht – Visions du Réel - 2003

Before any form of action takes place, or a story unwinds, or a subject emerges, the screen is filled with the clearest of poetry that one can find. Black and white pictures from a time and place that can't be documented, but whose images evoke a long forgotten book of Russian poetry. There is a story behind these beautiful images : that of a nomad who many years ago traded life in his village for the big city, and who now travels back to his roots to search after a forgotten past. Director Xavier Christiaens travelled to Kirghizstan and returned with this hypnotic reflection of longing and exile.

CPH:DOX ,catalogue, 2004

Visions du Réel, Nyon (Suisse), Doc Lisboa, Lisbonne (Portugal), Jihlava IDFF, Jihlava (Thèquie), Les Ecrans Documentaires, Arcueil (France), Les Inattendus, Lyon (France), European Media Art, Osnabrück (Allemagne), One world International Film Festival, Praha (Tchèquie), Cracow Film Festival, Cracow (Pologne), Split Film Festival, Split (Croatie), Document2, Glascow (Ecosse), Festival Internacional de Cine y Derechos Humanos, Barcelona (Espagne), Argosfestival, Bruxelles (Belgique), Cph:dox, Copenhagen (Danemark), Filmer à tout prix, Bruxelles (Belgique), Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan (Chine), The Images Festival, Toronto (Canada), Film Festival Seoul SENEF (Sud-Corée), Nanook Film Festival (Italie), Sami Film Festival, Kautokeino (Norvège), Slow Film Festival, Eger (Hongrie), Mar del Plata International Independent Film Festival (Argentine), Doc Corsica, Musée d’Art contemporain de Strasbourg,Festival des Cinémas différents (Paris), Musée Fabre de Montpellier, Doc Corsica (Corse) …

Ostrov www.ostrov-films.org | Wallonie Image Production www.ventes-cbawip-sales.be | Argos centre for art and media www.argosarts.org | Documentaire sur grand ecran www.docsurgrandecran.fr | Collectif Jeune Cinema www.cjcinema.org | Doc Alliance www.dafilms.com | and soon Doc.Net Films Editions www.docnet.fr