Roerloze Ontploffingen / Motionless Explosions

Motionless Explosions

Director: Roland Javornik
Country of origin: Belgium
Dutch with English subtitles

‘Motionless explosions’ is a short neo noir with motion comic elements that focuses on the life of gay people in the fictitious city of Hasaluth somewhere between 1948 and 1958. Based on three LGBT poems (‘Will you cover my retreat’, ‘At the bar’ and ‘A motionless explosion’) the film explores the emotional world of LGBT people in three intertwining stories. Those three stories each tackle a sensitive theme from rejection to temptation and bullying.

‘Will you cover my retreat‘: A stormy night in a neon lit city. When a sudden rainstorm surprises classy Yasmin, she has to take her refuge at the aquarium. As she takes a seat next to Tess a long suppressed passion flares up. Yet Yasmin has a secret.

‘At the bar‘: A couple of blocks away from the aquarium in an anonymous bar, young and confident Yann is enjoying an evening of drinking and music when his attention is drawn to timid Kwint. A game of attraction and rejection starts. But who is playing who?

‘A motionless explosion‘: 15 year old Eli is bullied in school for his homosexuality. Enough is enough but no one can hear his motionless explosion.

“Motionless Explosions” was shot entirly in front of a Blue screen.

The Director – Roland Javornik

There once was a boy named Roland who was born as the youngest child of three in a little village called “Molenbeersel” in Belgium. Getting a cheap picture camera for his 10th birthday was a good way to silence the images in his head. But there was one small problem… the pictures didn’t move prompting the images in his head to reappear!

Later that year his father bought an expensive VHS camera to record all the family happenings. Intrigued by this novelty Roland couldn’t resist. Yet his first encounter with film would be a painful experience … literally. After getting caught stealing his father’s expensive VHS camera out of the closet to shoot silly shorts, he got severely punished. Yet that didn’t stop him.

Eventually Roland went to High school in Hasselt where he studied Tourism and recreation. Roland never told anybody that he had lost his heart to the movies. After he finished high school he travelled to Cyprus and worked as an entertainer in Limassol. He lived there for 1,5 years before travelling back to Belgium. After this adventure he moved to Hasselt and started working as a customers service agent. But after two years the images in his head came back to haunt him! Roland decided to stop working and enrolled in the Media and Design academy in Genk where he worked his way through 4 intensive years of film school. He graduated in 2009 as a Master of Arts and is planning on scripting and directing the images he has carefully stored away in his head since his childhood.

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