Palace and Sonuma, in collaboration with Monique Licht, invite you to a tribute to film director Richard Olivier. On this occasion, two of his iconic films “Marvin Gaye transit Ostend” and “Marchienne de vie” will be
screened.  The films will be introduced by Richard Olivier himself, through previously unpublished interviews from the Sonuma archives, shedding light on his work and his vision as a filmmaker.

Marvin Gaye transit Ostend, Richard Olivier
BE, 29', 1981, VO EN ST FR

After watching the film, Marvin Gaye thanked the director, saying: “I thank you my artist friend for making me immortal”. Two years later, in 1984, he died in the United States in the height of his fame. King of soul in the States, Marvin Gaye “fell” by chance in Ostend, where he stayed for over a year, waiting for a solution to his many family and professional problems. Ostend was a geographical accident in the star's life. Far from his family, success and crowds, he relearned to be nothing, knowing full well what he was and would remain: Marvin Gaye, “the best”. Marvin Gaye Transit Ostend is both realistic in its subject and surreal in its writing. Ostend and its phantasmagorical setting lend themselves admirably to creating a striking contrast between it and this brilliant exponent of Rhythm and Blues music. Life's coincidence, captured on the spot in this musical document that no fiction, no matter how brilliant, could match in its absurdity and truth.


Marchienne de vie, Richard Olivier
BE, 58', 1994, VO FR

Marchienne de vie, the end of the world, where madness and absurdity rub shoulders on a daily basis in a place called Marchienne-au-Pont. Once the main center of the inland waterway industry, this is where the best steel in the world was made, where men blew glass, and where others from sunny lands went down into the mines. It was here, not so long ago, that the history of Wallonia was written. This investigative film was shot in a country that could well be renamed “the asshole of the world”, and that the Marc Dutroux affair would put under the spotlight two years later.