Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jeanet Film Adulte, 2025, film still
Jeanet Film Adulte (2025) is Pauline Curnier Jardin's new film work. It has been co-produced with steirischer herbst and NW, Open House for Contemporary Art and Film, and made in collaboration with residents from Aalst. The film will premiere in Curnier Jardin's solo exhibition Dress To Kill at NW Aalst (31.10.2025-29.03.2026).
Shot across two editions of the city’s carnival, the work follows the figure of the Voil Jeanet : men cross-dressing as caricatures of the sex worker, poor mother and madwoman. The film opens in reverse—at night, after the party—a cinematic gesture that echoes Carnival’s core logic of inversion. Beginning near the factory in central Aalst, the camera roots the work in the city’s industrial and working-class history, binding the spectacle to its infrastructural and social underbelly, even as those conditions have shifted. What starts in an atmosphere of quiet unease gives way to glitter, prosthetic flesh, plastic breasts and genitals, baby heads between thighs, and gore in full daylight. Costumes appear as both disguise and weapon, exposing the violence of stereotype while indulging in its grotesque excess.
Jeanet Film Adulte, 2025
16 mm film and video transferred to 4K video, 5.1 surround sound, 14:55 min.
Directed by Pauline Curnier Jardin
Produced and comissioned by steirischer herbst ’25 & NW, Open House for Contemporary Art and Film
Line producer Visage Productions – Quentin Goujout
Camera & Photography
16mm – Alasdair Asmussen Doyle, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Alexi Van Hennecker
Video – Crispin Yanisi
GoPro – Amani Abdalla Teia Juma, Emma Crombé, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Rubi Maier, Chloé Spittael, Kadijah Sumah, Nona Uyttenhove, Mattis Van Schuylenbergh, Jeroen Van Steendam
Camera assistants 16mm - Hugo Malidin, Laure Massiet
Camera assistant GoPro - Nikolai Jessen
Sound chief operators- Thomas Bouric, Bruno Schweisguth
Editing - Eve Le Cardonnel (assist. Alex Tornier)
Sound design and sound editing - Antonio Giannantonio
Re-recording mixing - Sandro Rossi
Color grading - Thomas Vinrich
Music - McCloud Zicmuse & Linus Vandewolken
Graphic design - Roxanne Maillet
Line production team - Godart Bakkers, Laura Herman, Yasaman Tamizkar, Martina Silvi, Agathe Jourdan
Technical support - ColorByDeJonghe (Kortrijk), Frame by Frame (Roma), La Prod Du Sud (Marseille)
Thanks to - Mocke Depret, Rubi Maier, Lucile Desamory, Rachel Garcia, Martina Silvi, NW Film Club, Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam), ChertLüdde (Berlin)
With the support of Flanders State of the Art and the City of Aalst
