Parliament shoots itself in the footage

Date: 06/06/1996

When it comes to public relations, the European Parliament still has an awful lot to learn.

For reasons best known to themselves, Euro MPs and their secretariat turned down a request from Belgian film director Jaco Van Dormael to shoot a few scenes for his latest picture in the new Brussels hemi-cycle.

The rejection was surprising, not least because the Parliament is supposed to be supporting Europe's struggling film industry against the American onslaught - wasn't there recently a lot of huffing and puffing about the need for strictly-enforced quotas on transatlantic pap to give the indigenous film sector a fair crack of the whip?

Be that as it may, Van Dormael could not get his cameras inside the building. And while lesser mortals would simply have cut out the planned scenes involving the European Parliament, the Belgian decided to build an imitation hemi-cycle at the Heysel Stadium, adding considerably to his filming costs. It was well worth it though - despite the Parliament's non-cooperation, Van Dormael's film Le huitième jour won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.