View of Writing or Rewriting a Silent Movie. Carl Th. Dreyer’s 'La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc' and its Novelization by Pierre Bost

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Abstract

This article deals with the material, stylistic and narrative singularities of La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), Pierre Bost’s novelization of Carl Th. Dreyer’s movie Joan of Arc (released earlier that year). It insists on the notion of “series logic”

and compares the Gallimard series “Le cinéma Romanesque” with the more popular series published by Tallandier and Fayard. It focuses on the instiutional reasons that turned this novelization into a book that was both exceptional and uneventful.

Résumé

Le présent article s’interroge sur les particularités matérielles, stylistiques et nar- ratives de La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d’Arc de Pierre Bost (1928), une novellisation du film muet de Carl Dreyer, Jeanne d’Arc (même année). Il insiste sur la notion de

« logique de collection » et situe « Le cinéma romanesque » de Gallimard par rapport aux collections populaires de Tallandier et de Fayard. Il prend surtout en considération le contexte institutionnel qui a fait de cette novellisation un objet à la fois si particulier et si insignifiant.

Jan B

^aetens

Writing or Rewriting a Silent Movie

The Example of Carl Th. Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and its Novelization by Pierre Bost

To refer to this article:

Jan B^aetens, “Writing or Rewriting a Silent Movie. The Example of Carl Th. Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and its Novelization by Pierre Bost”, in: Interférences littéraires/

Literaire interferenties, October 2013, 11, “L’encre et l’écran à l’ œuvre”, Karine a^Badie

& Catherine C^hartrand-L^aporte (eds.), 27-34.

http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be ISSN : 2031 - 2790

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Geneviève FaBry (UCL) Anke GiLLeir (KU Leuven) Gian Paolo GiudiCCetti (UCL) Agnès Guiderdoni (FNRS – UCL) Ben de Bruyn (FWO – KU Leuven) Ortwin de GraeF (Ku Leuven) Jan herman (KULeuven) Marie hoLdsworth (UCL) Guido Latré (UCL)

Nadia Lie (KU Leuven) Michel Lisse (FNRS – UCL) Anneleen massCheLein (KU Leuven) Christophe meurée (FNRS – UCL) Reine meyLaerts (KU Leuven) Stéphanie Vanasten (FNRS – UCL) Bart Vanden BosChe (KU Leuven) Marc Van VaeCK (KU Leuven) Pieter Verstraeten (KU Leuven)

Olivier ammour-mayeur (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle -–

Paris III & Université Toulouse II – Le Mirail) Ingo Berensmeyer (Universität Giessen)

Lars Bernaerts (Universiteit Gent & Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Faith BinCKes (Worcester College – Oxford)

Philiep Bossier (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Franca Bruera (Università di Torino)

Àlvaro CeBaLLos Viro (Université de Liège)

Christian CheLeBourG (Université de Lorraine – Nancy II) Edoardo Costadura (Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena) Nicola CreiGhton (Queen’s University Belfast) William M. deCKer (Oklahoma State University)

Dirk deLaBastita (Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix – Namur)

Michel deLViLLe (Université de Liège)

César dominGuez (Universidad de Santiago de Compostella

& King’s College)

Gillis dorLeijn (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Ute heidmann (Université de Lausanne)

Klaus H. KieFer (Ludwig Maxilimians Universität München) Michael KoLhauer (Université de Savoie)

Isabelle KrzywKowsKi (Université Stendhal-Grenoble III) Sofiane LaGhouati (Musée Royal de Mariemont) François LeCerCLe (Université Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV) Ilse LoGie (Universiteit Gent)

Marc mauFort (Université Libre de Bruxelles) Isabelle meuret (Université Libre de Bruxelles) Christina morin (Queen’s University Belfast) Miguel norBartuBarri (Universiteit Antwerpen) Olivier Odaert (Université de Limoges) Andréa oBerhuBer (Université de Montréal)

Jan oosterhoLt (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg) Maïté snauwaert (University of Alberta – Edmonton)

C^onseil^de^rédaCtion – redaCtieraad

David martens (KU Leuven & UCL) – Rédacteur en chef - Hoofdredacteur

Matthieu serGier (UCL & Factultés Universitaires Saint-Louis), Laurence Van nuijs (FWO – KU Leuven), Guillaume Willem (KU Leuven – Redactiesecretaris

Elke d’hoKer (KU Leuven)

Lieven d’huLst (KU Leuven – Kortrijk) Hubert roLand (FNRS – UCL)

Myriam watthee-deLmotte (FNRS – UCL)

Interférences littéraires / Literaire interferenties KU Leuven – Faculteit Letteren Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 – Bus 3331

B 3000 Leuven (Belgium)

C^omitésCientifique – WetensChappelijkComité

C^omité^de^direCtion – direCtieComité

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Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, n° 11, octobre 2013

27

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The Example of Carl Th. Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and its Novelization by Pierre Bost

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In the 1920s, novelization was definitely one of the most successful genres in the field of popular literature in France.¹ Various publishing houses released on a weekly basis highly standardized and cheaply printed novelistic versions of new films, which were circulated in impressive print runs. The interest for these publications was very large, for these books, which in those days resembled rather brochures or small format magazines, served more than one audience. Noveliza- tions were both read by those who did not have the possibility to go to the movies themselves and by those who used these publications to stage a new and different experience of a movie that was no longer just seen but also read (often in more or less poorly illustrated versions).²

Yet even in the beginning of the genre, novelization is not a phenomenon that could be confined to popular literature only. Given the significance of cinema for modernist and avant-garde writing, it should not come as a surprise that more mainstream publishers turned to the genre as well, although in a different, more high-brow spirit. A typical example of this policy is given by Gallimard/NRF, the most prestigious publishing company in 20th Century France. Gallimard’s initia- tives in the film and literature field are not (only) an attempt to cash in on the commercial success of genres such as the popular novelization, but testify of the lasting desire of many authors to explore the blurring of the boundaries between writing and cinema.

From a literary point of view, the most ambitious proposals by Gallimard/

NRF predate the arrival of sound in cinema. In the years between the end of the First World War and the commercial emergence of the talking movies, the publisher encouraged various experiments in the screenwriting and screen-inspired forms of writing,³ such as “Cinario” (a series of “original” scripts launched in 1926, less meant to be adapted on screen than to be read as a new form of literature), and, after the rapid failure of “Cinario”, “Le cinéma romanesque”, a “serious” noveliza-

1. On the genre of novelization, see Jan Baetens, La Novellisation. Du film au livre, Bruxelles, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2008. For basic information in English, see Jan Baetens, “From screen to text: novelization, the hidden continent”, in Deborah Cartmell & Imelda Whelehan (eds), Cam- bridge Companion to Literature on Screen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 226-238

2. On the example of La librairie Tallandier, one of the leading publishers in this domain, see Matthieu Letourneux and Jean-Yves moLLier, La Librairie Tallandier : Histoire d’une grande maison d’édition populaire (1870-2000), Paris, Nouveau Monde, 2011.

3. See Jeanne-Marie CLerC, Littérature et cinéma, Paris, Nathan, 1999, and Alain & Odette V^ir-

maux, Un Genre nouveau. Le ciné-roman, Paris, Edilig, 1983.

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writinGor rewritinGa siLent moVie

tion series that published 22 volumes in 1928-1929. The difference between the popular Tallandier and Fayard series and the one promoted by Gallimard was not in the material presentation of the books, which was quite similar in all cases, but in the literary quality of the Gallimard texts, characterized by their scarcity (more or less ten books a year, contrary to the weekly production of the competitors) and the prestige of their authors (who were not anonymous ink slingers like those working for Tallandier or Fayard). The arrival of the talkies will rapidly kill the series, however, and its authors will dramatically redefine their collaboration with the film industry: some of them start writing film scripts, others even try to direct movies themselves, as shown in the short-lived adventure of the Film Parlant Français, a kind of film department of the NRF.⁴

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Carl Th. Dreyer’s (French-funded) movie The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), one of the last important films of the then finishing silent era, had everything to enter the prestigious “Le Cinéma Romanesque” series. If the theme of the film was anything but exceptional in the nationalist post-War period (it was in 1920 that Joan was canonized by pope Benedict XV), its treatment by the artistically ambitious and much acclaimed Dreyer was very different from that of the other productions of that time. Working from the transcripts of Joan’s trial, Dreyer created a masterpiece of emotion that drew equally from realism and expressionism and that was equally accurate from an historical as from a psychological perspective. The formalist agen- da of the film, with its strong focus on extreme close-ups, prevented it from turning into nationalist or religious propaganda, as so many other works of these days.

The novelization by Pierre Bost (1901-1975), La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), is not untypical of the series that hosts it. In more than one regard, however, it is also quite different. Of all volumes of “Le cinéma romanesque”, this is definitely the most prestigious one, even if, from a material point of view the publication looks awfully cheap to modern standards. The first draft of the script had been co-written by a “hot” writer, Joseph Delteil, who had started to adapt his own novel on the same subject, the Femina prize winning Jeanne d’Arc of 1925, but whose strong personality had made him quarrel both with the Danish director and the Surrealist group that first supported his work. Moreover, Dreyer’s film, whose theatrical career was rather short, had received a very warm critical acclaim, in literary as well as in cinematographic circles. In addition, the choice of the novelizer, Pierre Bost, had also drawn a lot of attention to the book. A young man (he was 27) at the moment of the novelization, Bost was far from a beginner. Finally, and most impor- tantly, the book’s paratext gathers an impressive range of big shots −Valentine Hugo, Jean Cocteau, Jacques de Lacretelle, and Paul Morand− who all join in, praising the film as well as the exceptional performance of the leading actress, Miss Falconetti of the Comédie Française (the focus is always on the film, never on the novelization, which probably none of them had read at the moment of writing her or his introductory statement). Their testimonies and statements are followed by a preface

4. See Pierre assouLine, Gaston Gallimard, un demi-siècle d’édition française, Paris, Balland, 1984, 69, and Mireille BranGé, “Le cinéma chez Jean Prévost et les écrivains de la NRF”, in: Jean-Pierre LonGre & William marx (eds), Jean Prévost aux avant-postes, Paris-Bruxelles, Les Impressions Nou- velles 2006, 44.

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Jan Baetens

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of the novelizer, whose name is presented as having the same standing as that of the other artists. Here as well, it is the film that matters, although Bost spends some time on commenting his work. Such a stance is very exceptional (most of the time novelizers are not allowed to reflect upon their own practice) and the very existence of this kind of self-reflective remarks demonstrates the special status of the book.

Quite logically for this kind of singular novelization, Bost insists first on the notion of faithfulness in adaptation (still an unchallenged dogma in these years), while claiming as well a certain place for some of his modest creative interventions, for instance at the level of the psychological framing and motivation of the characters, for this was also what readers were expecting from a novelization. In light of film history, Bost’s claims become very meaningful. A friend of the Surrealists in the beginning of his career (and later well known as one of Simone de Beau- voir’s young lovers), he will establish in the 1940s, together with Jean Aurenche, the

“French quality” model of scriptwriting and moviemaking, which François Truf- faut will infamously but with great efficiency debunk in one of the founding articles of the French New Wave.⁵ The bottom line of Bost’s preface remains however the belief that adaptive fidelity is both an ideal and a possibility, and the success of an adaptation has to do with the respect of the preexisting script and dialogues. Similar remarks can also be made on the place and role of the illustrations (three images taken during the making off and twenty-two set pictures). Their relationship to the film is presented in fidelity terms as well, even if a set of still images can of course not be as close to the actual film as the text of the novelization is to that of the script.

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What makes the story of this novelization so fascinating is also the dramatic changes and events that have jeopardized the very existence of Dreyer’s film, which at a certain moment was even believed to be irremediably lost in a fire. A first refurbishment by film historian Lo Duca in the early 1950s proved to be very unprofessional and this version was less a restoration than an inappropriate “re- make”, aesthetically damaged by an aggressive sound-track and a whole series of still images that aimed at bridging the diegetic gaps of the movie. The original work was rediscovered by chance in 1981, and then restored according to modern standards by the Cinémathèque française in 1985. However, even today access to the film remains difficult for a French-speaking audience (there is no current DVD edition in French and the problematic Lo Duca version continues to circulate).

What all these changes of the cinematographic work make clear is that a novelization cannot be reduced to a derivative item of some “original”. Not only because in many cases such a book seems to present a greater material “stability”

than its filmic counterpart, but also because the novelizer has often no other choice than to introduce substantial changes, even when his major objective is to remain

5. « Une certaine tendance du cinéma français»», in François Truffaut, “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, in Le Plaisir des yeux. Ecrits sur le cinéma, Paris, Petite Bibliothèque des Cahiers du cinéma, 2000, 293-314 (first published in Les Cahiers du cinéma, 31, January 1954). An English ver-An English version can be found at: http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/DaVega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_

MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/A_certain_tendency_tr%23540A3.pdf (last accessed Dec. 21st, 2012).

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as faithful as possible (given the semiotic differences between words and images, absolute fidelity is utopian). Moreover, the public is always craving for something that the film alone used to be incapable of offering, namely a permanent trace, something that lasts after the viewing and that enables the spectator to repeat the filmic experience. From that point of view, the book is not the opposite of the film, but a continuation of the film with other means.

In the case of Joan of Arc, this expansion of the film beyond the limits of its theatrical projection existed from the very beginning. For what is being novelized here is not just the film, but a wide range of other, often non-filmic material. A rapid enumeration of the novelization source material (its avant-texte as much as its intertext, so to speak) would involve the following elements:

- The historical documentation of the Joan of Arc figure, which Dreyer claims to have followed as scrupulously as possible and which the novelizer can of course not wipe out.

- The legend of the saint martyr, which all readers of the novelization have inevitably in mind, even if the meaning and form of this legend shift through time.

But in 1928 it was definitely impossible not to take the social presence and impact of this legend on board.

- The countless literary and other representations of Joan of Arc, which filter both the production and the reception of the work. It is strictly unthinkable that during the writing of his book Pierre Bost would have been able to put between brackets the intertext provided by the work of Charles Péguy, for example.

- The actual source of the film itself, namely the biographical novel Joan of Arc by Joseph Delteil.⁶ This book was a permanent source of inspiration for the director, even if it possible to claim that the whole film was actually directed against the work of the first co-scriptwriter, Joseph Delteil. The clash between Delteil’s eminently physical, earthly recreation of Joan of Arc and Dreyer’s utterly rigid, Jansenist rethinking was probably one of the decisive elements in the publisher’s decision to order a novelization and thus compete with the more or less repressed original of the film (published by another company, Grasset).

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The intertextual and intermedial complexity of the material Bost had to work with, has a twofold effect on the novelization. First, it makes a close-reading of the sole text almost unthinkable. Each word written by Bost refers to such a wealth of visual and textual sources that it would be a pity to isolate the text from its cultural environment (and a comparison with Dreyer’s film is certainly not sufficient to dis- close this richness). Second, it gives also its structural and historical necessity to the reading of the novelization. For in the semiotic web that is created around the film

−itself a highly unstable artifact− it is not possible to foreground this or that item to the expense of all the others. As a matter of fact, Bost’s novelization demonstrates the impossibility to make strong distinctions between units or elements of primary value and elements or units that may be considered secondary. The book is

6. Joseph deLteiL, Jeanne d’Arc, Paris, Grasset, 1925.

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Jan Baetens

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published in a series that targets a very broad readership more interested in visual culture and the story behind the story, but at the same time it has been written in such a way that it can contend with more canonized literature in which the art of writing becomes an aim in itself.

But what is then the literary object that the film spectator discovers when buying and opening the book? Given the importance that both the four paratexts and Bost’s preface give to the theatrical experience of the movie, it is reasonable to suppose that the implicit reader of this publication is someone who knows The Passion of Joan of Arc, either because he has seen the picture in a theatre or because he has heard about the event by other means. Most paratexts are dated August 1928, and the introductory comments by Valentine Hugo are even dated September 7th. All these elements seem to give historical evidence for the fact that the writing of the novelization has followed quite closely the theatrical release of the film in Paris, which took place shortly after the universal premiere in Copenhagen on the 21st of April that same year (there had been an unofficial sneak preview in Paris just before, in a version that is no longer known but that does not seem to have been very different from the “final” one shown first to the Danish and then to the French public). Certain contributors of the paratextual frame of the book may have assisted the preview version, but all of them had certainly had the possibility to see the movie in the public release in Paris.

The complex history of the film makes it hard to correctly evaluate Bost’s work, for we do not know for sure to which extent he has taken into account the internal transformations of the filmic text. Nevertheless, one cannot feel but a ter- rible shock when reading today the novelization by Bost, which is both respectful and disrespectful of Dreyer’s film. True, Bost respects the string of events that constitute Joan of Arc, but nothing is more different from the film’s visual aesthetics than this novelization. On the one hand, the writing erases the filmic specificity of Dreyer’s work. On the other hand it adds also a certain number of elements that Dreyer was careful to avoid but that Bost esteemed necessary in a well-written novelization. Both maneuvers are more or less standard in the history of novelization, but the exceptional status of Dreyer’s film, which was immediately perceived by its contemporary viewers as a cry for aesthetic freedom and invention, and Bost’s book, which was constructed as a prestigious event, gives them a particular weight.

One can only conclude that the impact of the unwritten laws of the novelization were so strong in these years that even in a case as singular as The Passion of Joan of Arc the novelizer did simply not envisage the possibility of proceeding in a less conventional way. Despite his talent and ambition, Bost did not manage to do something else than mechanically applying the receipts of the day.

The most visible transformations have of course to do with the extensions.

Three types can be distinguished here.

First of all, the story told by the book is full of expansions. Bost starts for instance by a broad evocation of the historical context of Joan’s process, something that is totally missing in the film which opens in medias res. This popularizing pas- sage was probably meant for the less educated reader and Bost himself reminds in his introduction that uninterested or already informed readers may skip this part:

“Les treize premières pages du texte qui suit sont une sorte de prologue historique à la carrière même de

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Jeanne d’Arc. On pourra donc ne pas les lire si vraiment on ne cherche ici que le récit du film”. Second, he frequently sprinkles his text with historical details which he claims would have hindered the spectator of the film but whose presence does not hinder at all the reader of a book. Finally, he adds also a final scene that stresses the comparison between Joan of Arc and Christ, namely the pulling out of the martyr’s heart, which is thrown in the river Seine after her death.

A second category of changes refers to the shift of the narrative voice, which becomes omniscient in the book. Actually, it is difficult to imagine a more dras- tic change from “showing” to “telling” than the transition from the mute film of Dreyer to the very talkative and over-explicit book of Bost. Omniscience however does not mean I-narration. The voice we hear in the book is that of a collective, transpersonal narrator, which expresses himself in the first person plural. The narrator presents himself as the spokesman of the audience, to whom he displays the story, and in turn this audience is imagined in the stereotypical form of the vox populi. An example:

Cependant Cauchon n’oublie pas qu’avant d’être juge, il est prêtre. Cette femme qu’il envoie au bûcher, il entend qu’elle ait reçu d’abord les derniers secours de la religion, et il fait venir à lui deux des prêtres du procès.

Par quel dernier scrupule, par quel retour d’humanité fait-il alors appel à ces deux qui, durant les cérémonies cruelles, ont montré pour Jeanne le plus de bienveillance et de respect ? Espère-t-il encore que ce geste lui sera compté dans l’Eternité ?... Ou si seulement le hasard a guidé son choix ? (pp. 81-82)

Third and last, the omniscient narrator does not only penetrate the heart and mind of the characters in order to unearth their most hidden thoughts and moti- vations, he also manages to reproduce these thoughts in a very literal way. In other words, he makes explicit what Dreyer leaves to the imagination of the spectator. In certain dramatic cases, the craving for clarity and explicitness goes very far, such as for instance in the highly controversial scenes of the “voices” heard by Joan, even after her imprisonment (a crucial element in the charges against the martyr, accused of having invented the angels’ words). The concrete words that Bost attributes to these voices is far from absurd (what Joan hears and then repeats corresponds quite well to her testimony during the trial), but the book takes here a stance that is in complete antagonism with the film’s literal and metaphorical muteness.

Yet Bost does not only adds elements, he also takes away vital, mostly medium-specific aspects of the work by Dreyer for which Bost has made no attempt to invent a textual equivalent. Among the most important losses are:

- The emphasis on Joan’s face and, more generally speaking, the parti pris of close-up in Dreyer: Bost almost never gives details on the characters’ faces.

- The psychological treatment of distance and point of view, which Dreyer uses to display emotions and feelings: in Bost’s text, distance and point of view are no relevant features.

- The highly artificial and therefore highly meaningful character of backdrops and settings, both inside and outside the courtroom and the prison: Bost describes these settings in an uneventful, shallowly historical way.

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Jan Baetens

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- The changing rhythm of the film’s montage, sometimes incredibly fast, sometimes rather slow: here as well, Bost normalizes to the highest degree the pace of storytelling.

- The shock between visual sequences and title sequences, which disappears in the books.⁷

It is true that there is not a clear-cut and ready-made solution for the transpo- sition of medium-specific features, but in the case of Bost’s novelization there is an overall indifference to this issue. This indifference is not surprising as such, for it is part of the standard treatment of the filmic material in commercial novelizations.

But given the special status of the book and the largely shared awareness of the visual singularity of Dreyer’s movie, the reduction of the film to its script and the story as it can be retold in any medium whatsoever, is a powerful demonstration of the all-pervading impact of genre constraints.

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The major advantage of Bost’s approach and that of the publishing company that backs him, is its utmost honesty and frankness. It would be incongruous to charge the novelizer of misreading the film, for given the semiotic gap between cinema and literature a “correct” or “faithful” adaptation is simply impossible. What matters however is a better understanding of why neither Bost nor, apparently, the readers of his book did follow in such a scrupulous way the do’s and don’t’s of a well-established cultural practice (the commercial novelization) in the case of a work that definitely pulled into a very different direction (Dreyer’s Joan of Arc).

Although there is not much historical information on the reception of the novelization of La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d’Arc, a book that soon fell into obli- vion, there are at least two hypotheses that can be defended. First of all one should stress the importance of the series logic, whose program and internal standards may have overruled any possible aesthetic ambition of the novelizer. “Le cinéma Romanesque” was meant to cash in on the success of the long-running and very successful series of Tallandier and Fayard, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bost had to write his novelization within the constraints imposed by these competing series. The emphasis on storytelling and the adoption of an uneventful, explicit, overtly didactic style were definitely consequences of institutional choices made by the publisher. However, given the prestige and the specific profile of Gal- limard/NRF, such an explanation cannot suffice to explain what happened with Bost’s rewriting of Joan of Arc. The special presentation of the book, with an excep- tionally rich and prestigious paratextual apparatus, hints to more than just commercial objectives. A second hypothesis must therefore be formulated, which does not only rely on the genre’s constraints but on the place of the series and its constraints within the larger editorial policy of the publisher in 1928. After the commercial

7. There is some discussion on the aesthetic value of the «smoothness» of novelizations that try to attenuate the «failure» of silent films that both needed textual inserts to make their story comprehensible and were mutilated by their lack of visual homogeneity with the rest of the film. For further details, Jeanne-Marie Clerc, Littérature et cinéma, o.c., 97-98.

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failure of “Cinario”, Gallimard clearly feared a new fiasco, hence the return to the popular literature molds in a project that had everything to become a high-profile cult book. Moreover, the series logic at work in the catalog of French publishers such as Gallimard made also that each series had to stick as much as possible to its own contours. Smaller or avant-garde publishers might have crossed more easily the boarders between series, genres, styles, and tones, but in the case of a “general” publisher bringing out simultaneously a wide range of series, each of them targeting different readerships, confusion had to be avoided at all cost. There was definitely room for modern, if not avant-garde texts with Gallimard, but their place was not in “Le cinéma Romanesque”. What Bost did, was positively the right thing.⁸

Jan B^aetens KU Leuven – MDRN jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be

8. The research for this article has been financially supported by BELSPO within the 7th IAP program (P7/01, LMI/Literature and Media Innovation: http://lmi.arts.kuleuven.be/) and is also part of the research program conducted by the Leuven MDRN group (www.mdrn.be).