Belgian Narcissus: Campfire director Bavo Defurne talks about the beauty of his films--and his actors. (video).

Watching the short films of Belgian film director Bavo Defurne, four of which have recently been released on DVD under the title Campfire (Strand Video), can be both an aesthetically pleasing and an emotionally bittersweet experience. Defurne, 31, perfectly evokes the aching adolescent longings of gay teenagers while setting them within experimental visual settings--some reminiscent of Pierre et Gilles, others of Carl Theodor Dreyer.

"I aim for emotional truth in my work, although I'm not particularly interested in practical reality," he explains. "All the films are quite sad and end with the leading character being rejected. They are about being different and not being accepted by the standards of society, but I wanted the beauty of them to offer hope to audiences."

The first short on the DVD, Campfire itself, which Defurne made in 1999, is the story of an exceptionally handsome young boy scout (played by nonprofessional straight actor Joram Schurmans) who sleeps with a school friend on a camping trip, only to be publicly humiliated by the boy the following day. "Campfire has been used by the Belgian government in schools to talk about lesbian and gay issues," says Defurne, "but it's not just made for gay men. I remember I showed the film in a lesbian program and a girl came up to me afterwards and said that it was her youth on the screen. She saw further than gender and realized that it was about being different."

The other shorts--including Saint (1996), about the death of Saint Sebastian; and Sailor (1998), about the doomed romance between a young man (Schurmans again) and a sailor--also reflect Defurne's melancholy voice, which he developed while studying film at the experimental St. Lukas arts school in Brussels. "The things I most learned from school was to tell the things within me that were urgent to tell and to find a voice through which nobody else would tell them," he says. Although the first shorts were nonlinear mood pieces, the most recent, Campfire, features a deliberately conventional narrative. "I am trying to make the work more accessible so that more people can be touched by it," he adds.

His big test comes later this year, when, once the financing contracts are signed, he and his partner and producer Yves Verbraeken begin work on their first feature film, Secretly Inside, based upon the little-known novel by Dutch gay writer and diarist Hans Warren. Set in wartime Holland in 1942, it is the story of a young Jewish man hiding out on a remote farm who becomes involved with both the farmer's son and daughter.

Defurne and Verbraeken are casting professional actors for the first time for the film, although undoubtedly some measure of beauty will be a prerequisite for the 25-year-old lead. "I like beauty a lot," says Defurne. "I tend to cast very natural, very beautiful people but not just beautiful in a fashion magazine sense: Their beauty should have something to say."

Goodridge is U.S. editor of Screen International.