Brel

today it is 25 years ago that the legendary chansonnier jacques brel died in a hospital in paris. he is buried on the island of hiva-ca (marquesas islands), only a few metres away from paul gauguin.
just watched an interesting hour-long documentary on belgian television.

of course it treated the course of his career, but especially focused on his love-hate relations with flanders, the dutch-speaking part of belgium. brel came from a french-speaking milieu. he often proclaimed to be fond of flanders, but he made a few critical songs which were badly received by the flemish people (‘les flamandes’ and ‘les flamingants’). in his later years brel directed the movie ‘marc’, “situated in flanders because i love flanders…”