Better Than Gold
Date:
December 15, 2022
Better Than Gold
Better Than Gold
by Leen Michiels
Krater Films | Belgium
Documentary | 1st feature
*the access to our meeting platform and director’s previous works will start from January 10, 2025
Logline
“Use these matchs to burn all art, and the last to burn me.” Inscribed on Burnart, an animated matchbox, this hybrid documentary delves into the art market’s world, exploring how our connection to art shifts when it’s hidden, intangible, or destroyed.
Synopsis
Better Than Gold is a hybrid documentary that follows Burnart, an animated matchbox artwork inspired by Ben Vautier’s Total Art Match-Box, as it grapples with its desire for self-destruction in a world where art’s value is increasingly tied to market forces. Trapped in an art vault, Burnart longs to burn, reflecting on the paradox of destruction as creation. Along its journey, Bernart interacts with artists, collectors, and digital art experts who challenge the boundaries of physical and digital art.
As Burnart moves between the physical world and the digital metaverse, it faces new dilemmas: Can burning itself bring the fulfillment it seeks? Or does the endless revival in the form of NFTs render destruction meaningless? Or the other way around? Featuring insights from renowned artists like Anish Kapoor, Tacita Dean, Damien Hirst and Pak and with guidance of an art oracle collector Alain Servais, Better Than Gold explores how art evolves and is reborn in the ever-changing landscape of the creation of value and meaning in the contemporary art market.
Director’s Profile
I first stumbled into my love for storytelling during my interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at Maastricht University, where I became enchanted by the tangled intersections of visual culture, narrative, psychology, philosophy, and expression—where applying the rules of one discipline to a question from another often leads to delightfully surprising insights. I’m fascinated by how art can teach us about the mind and how storytelling unravels the complexities of human behavior—like how only knowing something rarely makes us change, no matter how much we wish it did! The beauty of mixing disciplines is that philosophy, science, and the arts each offer their own lens, reshaping how we see and experience the world. It’s in these unexpected connections—where a psychological theory meets a paintbrush, or a philosophical question sneaks into a film scene—that I find the richest ground for creativity.
This curiosity brought me into the audiovisual world, where I navigated a variety of projects—television, fashion, theater, branded content, and social organizations—as a self-taught director. My debut short film, Your Approval is Not Essential(2016), blurred boundaries and won awards, shifting between dance film in the fashion world and fiction film in the dance community. Genre-bending wasn’t a deliberate choice; it just happens when playful curiosity loves to cross borders, blend perspectives, and unravel conventions to get at the heart of a story.
Company Profile
KRATER, founded during the dawn of covid times 2020, is a new, content-driven audiovisual production company, based in Ghent/Belgium. KRATER creates quality fiction films, series and documentary projects with an international potential. The company was established by Maarten D’Hollander and Tim Martens, who both have extensive experience as producers. Maarten has worked as an independent producer on international productions since 2015, Tim has been working for more than 10 years as a producer and head of production for production and distribution company Lumière. They joined forces in KRATER to create new and thrilling content.
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