Striptease the Belgian
and French Way
Belgian physicist Marco Lamensch started his TV-career by doing scientific documentaries. Yet, his scientific style didn't appeal to the TV- viewers' tastes, and so he moved on to making reportages. Once, after a long reportage trip, he suggested that his TV-company would start making short films in his own country.
"I had become bored with travelling around and finishing films in two weeks, always working in an unfamiliar environment where I didn't know the language nor the people".
This is how the Striptease series got started in 1985. It comes out once a month as a primetime show, with four documentaries each time. The series has gained such an enormous success that after five years the French too started their own Striptease. Now the Belgians and the French have an exhange deal: one of the four Striptease films always comes from the neighbours.
Living furniture
In the beginning of the series the documentaries consisted mostly of interviews, now they are mainly feature stories, and there is never any commentary in them.
"We are filming reality, so we don't want to talk about it, we want to capture it on the film. We try to make documentaries using the film language".
The hardest part of making Striptease is to get a grip with the right, exact moment, so the staff just hangs around at the spot almost around the clock.
"We're there from early morning till late at night. In families we help to wash the children, in factories we work just like others.
This way people get used to us, and we become more like living furniture".
Translation: Pia Valtanen
© pomot 1998