As We Walk [film + concert]

In recent years, Hanne De Backer has reached the top of the European improvisation scene. In 2017, she founded the changing collective g a b b r o, which aims to improvise in unusual places such as a prison or an old sewage system. For her latest project As We Walk, De Backer walked along the Belgian coastline together with drummer Raf Vertessen and pianist Andreas Bral in the company of a camera crew and ... a camel. A straight line of about sixty-five kilometres.

The film is surprisingly subdued and poetic. In tranquil black-and-white images, we see how the trio improvises on empty beaches, in a church or on a breakwater. Armed with backpacks, winter coats and a wagon, they brave the whooshing North Sea wind and the corrosive beach sand. The film ripples at a slow pace and shows the Belgian coast in all its battered glory.

Following the film, De Backer, Bral and Vertessen will also launch g a b b r o's third album with a live concert.