DOKU.ARTS
Zeughauskino Berlin
09.09.–27.09.2015

Antwerp Central

The huge central train station in Antwerp, constructed by the Bruges architect Louis Delacenserie and completed in 1905, forms the subject of a virtuoso meditation in W.G. Sebald’s final novel Austerlitz (2001). Taking up where Sebald leaves off, Peter Krüger’s poetic documentary guides us into the station’s vast spaces, allowing us to visualise in close-up, and with extended analysis, what Sebald so brilliantly writes about.

The filmmaker secured the close co-operation of the railway authorities (who were restoring the building as the film was being made) and the city council, allowing him access to rooms and perspectives never normally seen by the public. These permissions also allow us to see the station empty, deserted by its usual crowds of passengers – a rare privilege.

Following Sebald’s trail, Krüger finds himself in search of the ghosts of Belgian’s colonial past – a dark chapter of the country’s history, which is rarely accounted for. The approach is subtle and poetic however. Essentially the film is a homage to the dream of architecture: to the grandeur of a fin-de-siècle town planning which, in its public buildings, prized fantasy, ornament and ambition beyond everything.