International premiere 'Filming Living Heritage - the Film'
Articles
On 17 October 2025—both the International Day of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the closing day of the international Big Stuff 2025 Conference, co-organized from Belgium and Australia—the short film ‘Filming Living Heritage’ will premiere before an international audience of heritage professionals and practitioners. From that day onwards, the film will also be made available online, allowing a wider public around the world to experience it.
Recently nominated for the Heritage in Motion Award 2025 in the category Heritage Audiovisuals, the film demonstrates how filmmaking can be mobilized as a tool for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. More than documenting traditions, it shows how film can research, highlight, and transmit the knowledge, skills, and values that heritage bearers continue to pass on from generation to generation.
The film is the culmination of the Focus Craftership project (2021–2023), which developed a practical toolbox and 11 collaborative film projects on living heritage and craftsmanship in Flanders. Directed and edited by Alexander Kerkhof (Feathers on Wings), and produced by Bokrijk | Craftsmanship & Heritage and Workshop Intangible Heritage BE, ‘Filming Living Heritage’ was created in close partnership with craftspeople and heritage organizations, with the support of the Flemish government.
What makes this work distinctive is its emphasis on film as more than a record: it becomes an instrument for safeguarding, bridging past, present, and future, and opening new pathways for engagement. By capturing gestures, voices, and stories in motion, the film invites audiences to re-experience and re-imagine the safeguarding of embodied heritage in a rapidly changing world.
The premiere at Big Stuff 2025 will celebrate the crafts, the makers, and this recognition at the international level—while encouraging reflection on how film can help keep living heritage alive for future generations.
Special thanks go to the partners - Big Stuff, CAG, CEMPER, Histories, PARCUM, ETWIE, FARO, and all the heritage communities involved.