Abstract
Presents a case study of a number of popular films made in Belgium between 1939 and 1957 by Gaston Schoukens (working in Brussels) and Edith Kiel with Jan Vanderheyden (working in Antwerp) using local actors and locations and familiar storylines to appeal to local audiences. Argues that despite their aims, the films are marked by a tension between down-to-earth ideals and the use of escapist tactics to create a feel-good joviality or stereotypes of "the Belgian". Adopting and expanding Jean-Pierre Jeancolas's notion of "inexportable" cinema, the study sets out to create a template for a mode of address that is locally specific and temporally contiguous, while examining the problematic that such a mode creates between what we might think of as auto-expression and auto-exoticism. (Quotes from original text)