"Brussels in the middle of the 20th century:" "images of a medieval city... 150 years later, it is Europe's capital." "A city in turmoil, a catalog or urban errors." "How did we get to this place?" "It all starts in 1860" "Mayor Anspach decides to make the La Zenne river disappear and to turn it into a sewer." "Twenty years later, the world's largest courthouse is inaugurated." "In the Marolles district, the word "architect" has become an insult." "Start of the 20th century:" "a train link opens between the North and South stations." "The town is split in two." "The works will span nearly fifty years." "1958: the Universal Exhibition is about to open." "The city undergoes a new series of tremors:" "tunnels and the inner ring road, parking lots take over." "The city dedicates itself to the automobile and the office." "Once again, working class neighborhoods are destroyed." "Politicians and developers do not conceal their fascination with New York." "In 1974, the northern district is flattened to make space for a new dream." "We don't want to build concrete blocks, we must try to give life and a soul to these districts." "That's my goal." "The "Manhattan plan" will never be completed." "But among urban developers worldwide a new word is all the rage: "brusselization"." "Brusselization?" "Sincerely I don't clearly see what that means." "Brussels still suffers today from the wild implantation of the gigantic European parliament." "What are the forces that for 150 years have been compelling the city to destroy itself ?" "What I'm going to tell you tonight is the story of a multi-month investigation." "A news investigation, a historical investigation and a police investigation." "It's an unbelievable story that explains some events more than a hundred years old." "A story that began in Brussels but that will take us very, very far." "The B File" "An investigation by Claire de Villers" "Produced by Wilbur Leguebe" "First troubling fact: the subway works beneath Place Louise in the city center were abandoned." "A first level does operate normally but few inhabitants of Brussels know that a second level also exists." "Here construction was abandoned nearly fifteen years ago." "We started this in 1979 and we finished it around the end of 1981." "Can you tell me why construction was stopped?" "Yes, in Brussels there was a change in transportation policy, large subway works were abandoned, and current projects focus on surface transportation." "That's the official viewpoint." "But we traced a worker from the site." "His explanation is quite different." "You worked on the Louise site." "Can you tell me why you left it?" "First, it's true we heard lots of sounds." "Sounds that came from everywhere." "You told me that you heard voices." "What did they sound like?" "Strange but very strong voices." "They came, they went, but they were always present." "That's why the workers became afraid." "Clearly there is something behind the abortion of the Louise station." "But what?" "Was there a hidden logic behind all these absurd construction projects?" "A logic?" "There probably was a logic in the minds of those who started these works." "My feeling is that this logic gradually dissolved." "Power changed hands, there were contradictory influences." "I can see you coming." "I bet you're going to talk to me about Bruzel." "Bru what?" "Bruzel." "What's that?" "Miss, many people come to talk to me about Bruzel." "They say "as a historian, you must have known Bruzel."" "For forty years I've been working on Brussels." "and "Bruzel" is an imaginary city that many people believe really existed." "And they give me a pain in the neck with Bruzel, miss." "It's a myth, it's a story for mad people." " Is it a legend, or..." " It's more than a legend, it's a conviction with some Brussels people... not all of them idiots." "They believe in it." "Legend or not, it deserves a closer look." "But traces of this "Bruzel" are scarce." "In the Brussels city archives, I found a first lead about this "Bruzel"." " Is this what you're looking for?" " Yes, thanks." "It was in a magazine from the 1930s." "An image entitled:" ""The Palace of the three Powers in Bruzel"." "The image evoked the courthouse." "It was signed Robert Louis Marie De La Barque." "A name I didn't know." "But according to the article some of this artist's paintings were at the D'Ixelles museum." "I think there was one in this room." "It was taken down a few years ago." "I don't know why, but I'm guessing: museums are overflowing, not all paintings can be hung." "At all rate, minor works cannot be hung." "And Mr. De La Barque is clearly a minor painter." "He knew it when he was alive and had a hard time competing with strong personalities such as Delvaux or Magritte." "So he reconverted into illustrations, popular images, in a realistic, expressionistic style, or imitating film sets in the style of Metropolis." "That's how he "consoled himself" from painting." "He had a passion for the Brussels courthouse and often drew it in his fashion." "Have you also heard about "Bruzel"?" "His favorite subject was Brussels' architecture, but he called them things from "Bruzel"." "He wasn't Flemish, but perhaps he was influenced by the Flemish language, where one says "Bruzel"." "It would be nasty to say that he had poor spelling and consistently misspelled that word." "That would surprise me." "I easily found traces of De La Barque." "Born in 1885, deceased in 1958, he lived his whole life in Scarbeck." "It's a mess here." "His house and his studio were demolished." "But in the attic of one of his nieces, I found some of his belongings." "Among them, many documents about the courthouse." "It really was one of his obsessions." "He had even drawn a map." "In his photo albums, we see him drawing on the construction site for the North Station to South Station link." "At the time it was the city's largest construction site." "At first sight nothing special in this family movie." "The artist at work drawing his beloved courthouse." "Hard to get a sense for his drawings." "I wanted to know what De La Barque might be saying." "I tried an experiment." "I showed the film to someone who can lip read." "Courthouse?" "Courthouse." "Three." "Power." "You will search for?" "... discover?" "..." "search for the secret... in..." "Ah, yes." "He, De La Barque, will search for the secret in the courthouse." "Here, roughly, is what De La Barque tells his children." "In this courthouse there is something no one can know, but that I discovered." "One day we will go together in the Palace of the Three Powers, and I will show you." "This courthouse and its architect Joseph Poelaert are intriguing." "It was to be the largest in the world." "A competition took place for its design." "Poelaert was a member of the jury." "But after eliminating all the candidates he pulled from his drawers a project on which he'd been working for ten years." "It took his colleagues' breath away." "Building took over twenty years and emptied the state's coffers." "Poelaert never saw the finished courthouse." "He died in 1879, four years before the end of construction." "He is said to have become insane." "There are many dark areas about the courthouse's history, starting with the original blueprints, which are missing." "Here too there is a mystery, as during his life there were no final blueprints during construction, so the drawings were continuously revised." "Poelaert worked mostly at night, and constantly revised his drawings because they didn't satisfy him." "When the Ministry of Justice asked for final blueprints, he would send several to get rid of them or he would even say "No, I don't have any."" "and since the scope of the works forbade a change of architect, they stayed with Poelaert---and uncertainty about the blueprints." "There were draft blueprints, but they disappeared in 1944 when the Germans burned the courthouse's archives." "So we have no trace now." "We have nothing." "The Poelaert mystery has always aroused strange passions." "For instance those of writer Pierre Lidiaux in the 1960s." "Good evening." "Tonight two new books." "First Swedish Castles by Françoise Sagan whom I will interview in a few moments" "But first a Belgian author, Pierre Lidiaux who will tell us about his first book." " Pierre Lidiaux, good evening." " Good evening." "You just published The B File, an unclassifiable book where the courthouse and Poelaert, its architect, play major roles." "Why this interest for this building that is over-scaled and, let's say it, fairly ugly." "For me the courthouse is not ugly." "A hundred years ago, Mayor Anspach said this monument would be the most beautiful if not the "only one" of the 19th century." "Anspach even wanted it to be as expensive as possible so that no one could reproach Brussels to have done a cheap job." "Yes, on that account his wishes came true." "But today, in 1960, what still seems current to you about this courthouse?" "It's an esoteric building, I'd even say an initiatory building." "Everyone knows Poelaert was a Freemason." "It's obvious that the courthouse is littered with masonic symbols, numbers." "But in my view, all of that is only a cover." "The truth is that Poelaert was obsessed with the notion of passage." "I don't know if our viewers will be able to follow you on that field." "Of course." "I know this interpretation disturbs." "Yet the proofs are here, undeniable." "Poelaert refused to show the blueprints." "When Representatives insisted, he showered them with all kinds of contradictory drawings." "Actually the courthouse had a secret purpose." "Poelaert wanted to link Brussels to a parallel city in which he believed" "Bruzel." "And the search for this passage explains the top-level support he received throughout the construction." "Yes, yes." "And this passage, where would it be?" "I won't explain it in front of your cameras while I took 268 pages to present the matter in all its complexity." "I believe there is still much research and complex work if we want to approach..." "We don't doubt it." "Anyhow thanks Pierre Lidiaux." "I'll repeat the title of your book:" "The B File." "One could take Pierre Lidiaux for a madman." "But the courthouse itself still has surprises in store for us." "It would be interesting to study the courthouses's foundations because they're designed by Poelaert, whereas the higher levels were designed by other architects." "These foundations seem to contain parts of a labyrinth, of a Freemason's initiatory path." "Had Poelaert hidden this secret passage in the underground of his courthouse?" "I took the map De La Barque had drawn and followed the paths he had marked." "They all led me to dead-ends:" "corridors without exits, wire gates to which no one supposedly held the keys." "Entire staircases had been walled in." "In recent years, the courthouse (and its underground level in particular) have undergone large transformations." "Yet the head warden remains discreet about these works." "Yes, but there are rules and I cannot speak about it." "And in the dome?" "Neither in the dome." "You cannot speak." "I cannot speak." "I know but I cannot speak." "The places I crossed by following De La Barque's map match photos by Pierre Lidiaux shown on the literary TV program." "As though he too had handled the maps, and as though we had both followed them thirty years apart." "Might there be a link between De La Barque the forgotten painter and Lidiaux the visionary writer?" "Could they have met?" "Only one way to know:" "to read Pierre Lidiaux's book." "The B File?" "No, miss, we don't have that book." "Couldn't you tell me where I can find it?" "No, miss, no." "Pierre Lidiaux's book can no longer be found." "His publisher went under, the author seems to have vanished." " Is this where you work?" " Yes, yes." " Careful." " Sorry." "Luckily, a few traces of his remain in a corner of the archives." "As you see, Mr. Lidiaux was very interested in the major works that transformed Brussels for the 1958 exhibition." "Here he is in front of the Museum Quarter..." "here the slums..." "and the People's House." "Isn't it strange, today all these places have disappeared." "Ah, yes, clearly they disappeared." "That's why Mr. Lidiaux was interested." "But what was he looking for on all these construction sites?" "A passage, of course." "First he wanted to find it in the courthouse, then he got it in his mind that there were other places in the city." "That's how he started his movie." "What movie?" "I have my archives, miss." "And the best piece in my collection is a film by Mr. Lidiaux." "He started to shoot but he couldn't finish." "There's only one spool." "He shot at the Wiertz museum." "Do you know it?" "Of all the misunderstood artists who lived in Brussels," "Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865) is one of the most noteworthy and peculiar." "Wiertz arrived in Brussels in 1845, disappointed by the reception of his paintings in Paris." "One ended as a prize in a raffle." "Though he was an anarchist, he quickly convinced the Minister of the Interior to build him a huge studio." "Nearly 13 meters high, the studio could house all his works." "In exchange, he bequeathed to the State all his paintings in advance." "Baudelaire, who hated him, mocked him:" ""What will Belgium do with all this?"" "Amazingly blind, the critics saw nothing even though everything had been said." "It had all been shown by Mythes, this painting, peculiar among all." "This door half-ajar painted directly on the wall---doesn't it say that Wiertz's true theme is Passage?" "Passage to a better world, a better world which may be..." "Bruzel." "As if to underline this, Wiertz painted a key nearby, key to this door, key to his work, a key so far unnoticed." "Come on, Brussels, arise." "Become the world's capital, and may Paris for you be a mere provincial town." "Such is the heart of Wiertz's message, Wiertz who inscribed this sentence at the entrance of his museum." "Wiertz who first, true prophet and visionary, spoke of Brussels as Europe's capital." "Brussels, Europe's capital." "Wiertz didn't know how right he was." "The Wiertz museum occupies a surprising spot in Brussels." "It lies in the heart of the gigantic works for the European Parliament." "When we returned to see the librarian, his attitude suddenly changed." " Sir, just a few questions." " No, no." " Just a few questions, it won't take long." "He was strangely reluctant to speak in front of the camera." "But he became talkative again when he thought the interview was over." "It's amazing, that Wiertz museum, standing in the middle of this huge construction project." "It's obvious." "Wiertz was a member of the sect." "Poelaert too by the way." "I even believe these two were founding members of the sect." "What sect?" "You don't know?" "It's the sect that believes in the existence of a second city." "parallel to Brussels." "I don't understand." "It's as though there were two towns, one inside the other." "Like a mirror's reflection." "A live reflection." "You understand?" "Do you believe this whole story?" "This is not just any story, miss." "There was research about it." "There was the book by James Welles." "Then I researched it too." "For years I've been searching in the city, in all directions." "And until now, I have..." "Are you filming?" "You can't film." "You can't film this." "The librarian didn't want to add anything." "But he had said too much." "Or too little." "I tried to collect other views about this story of a parallel city." "Careful, it's heavy." "I got in touch with Christian Van der Weld the explorer of the Brussels underground." "First I found a large tunnel." "Then I started to search street by street, house by house, cellar by cellar, checking if there was a tunnel entrance, and that's how I found 41 kilometers of tunnels," "74 entrances and 101 unknown sites." "Some tunnels were built over four eras." "The first time you go, you don't understand very well why there are Spanish bricks, bricks from 1700, modern bricks." "All of that mixed together, and it's sometimes complicated." "Do you believe these tunnels might lead to secret passages?" " Most probably." " Most probably?" " Yes." "And do you believe these secret passages might lead to a parallel city?" "That's... hard to say." "There are unexpected phenomena that allow what I would call short circuits in time-space which in English are called worm holes like those that worm dig underground to go from one place to another." "Well that's a bit what takes place in space-time." "Some mathematical solutions to Einstein's equations would in theory allow short-circuits that would allow to move from one place in space-time to another, places that to us seem very far from one another in space." "One class of solutions has been known for a long time but those are "impractical", as a way of speaking, because they are dynamic and they close, open, close, open so that a traveler would fast be eliminated from such passages before even getting out." "On the other hand, we recently found short circuits in space-time which are static, in other words some kinds of tunnels that link one region of space-time to another." "I'm saying these were found in theory, not by experiment... and these seem to have all the properties that a desirable short-circuit in space-time should possess to allow this sort of phenomenon." "For physicist Edgar Gunzig, the hypothesis of a passage in space-time is therefore not impossible." "James Welles, a British historian, goes even further." "His book, Shadows in the Night:" "a Secret Society in Belgium has not yet been translated into French." "It might be translated:" "Shadows in the Night:" "a Secret Society in Belgium" " Ha!" "I saw my book." " Mr. Welles." " Nice to meet you." " Claire de Villers." " Yes, nice to meet you." " Did you have a good journey?" " Very good, thanks." " This is the Northern district?" " Yes, all the old houses were demolished." "I don't know if Bruzel really existed, and as a historian I cannot give a view on this question" "But what is sure, with scientific objectivity, is that the "Bruzel sect" did exist." "Most documents were hidden or destroyed but some traces remained, especially in the form of letters." "Letters from whom?" "Who belonged to this sect?" "Poelaert?" "Wiertz?" "Yes, but they were not the only ones to refer to Bruzel when dreaming the ideal city." "A growing number of big wigs believed in the existence of this parallel city or at least referred to it to guide their actions." "Their common goal was a mighty Brussel." "One of the sect's most important members was Anspach." "Jules Anspach." "He was mayor from 1863 to 1879 and he dedicated all his energy to reorganizing the map of Brussels." "He destroyed the old districts to build large boulevards and to promote Brussels among Europe's great capital cities." "According to James Welles, Brussels is strewn with statues of the sect's most influential members." "Solvey, an industrialist, was one of the most active members of this secret society." "Why did Solvey's physics symposiums all take place in Brussels, at the Metropole hotel?" "Because Solvey himself believed in the existence of Bruzel." "Perhaps he saw a market for his welding workshops, perhaps his goals were purely altruistic." "What is certain is that the existence of Bruzel weighted heavily in the debate of modern fundamental physics that opposed Einstein to Niels Böhr, the German physicist." "One had to see that if Bruzel existed, that would have been proof that Einstein was wrong." "Niels Böhr famous complementarity theory had a double meaning." "Beyond quanta, it was about complementarity between our world and the one known as the "obscure cities"." "That is obscure, you can say it twice." "In my mind Solvey is one of the keys to the whole story." "Why did Solvey, a great capitalist, discreetly finance the construction of Horta's People's House, one of the hives of the most radical kind of socialism?" "Why did he also help the construction ---also by Horta---of the Tassel hotel and of his own house?" "Because Horta himself belonged to the sect." "Victor Horta, great admirer of the courthouse, had very clear and modern ideas about what Brussels had to become." "As for this Solvey library, abandoned for so long, in my view it was meant to be the sect's gathering place and to centralize information and images about Bruzel." "How do you explain that such a genius architect as Victor Horta may have become excited about such a monstrosity as the Brussels we know today?" "In reality, the original utopia gradually derailed." "It's hard to place in time, but you can already see signs in the second half of Horta's career when he grew enthusiastic about American architecture disowning Art Nouveau in favor of a more classical, more massive style." "According to Welles, the sect's ideals gradually degenerated." "The Bruzel utopia became a pretext for all kinds of speculation." "Sensing the profit to be drawn from this idea, developers and politicians took the place of artists." "In the 1950s, during the preparations for the Universal Exhibition, the face of the city made a permanent swing and that's when the megalomania of what is sometimes know as "brusselization" began." "As you know, some of these works were not undertaken without hardship the face of Brussels is ever-changing, and its inhabitants don't like to be shaken." "Their complaints were long and loud but the works went on against all tides, and today some cute corners of Brussels already belong to the past." "The Mount of Arts was destroyed its trees were fallen, and tunnels, parking garages and major roads were built." "Paul Van Den Buynens was a politician who played a large role in this story." "He was Prime Minister." "But did you know that he began his career in 1958 as steward of the Universal Exhibition?" "Since 1958, Paul Van Den Buynens has played a key role in Brussels' development." "I asked him whether Brussels had been a victim of its leaders' megalomania." "Megalomania?" "No, no." "But probably the ambition of growing, the ambition of winning its place at any price." "That's true." "We were really small and we had a desire to become larger at any price." "Do you not believe that Brussels' urban excesses stemmed from the influence of a parallel city:" "Bruzel?" "No, come on, listen." "That's a fantasy." "The state also worries about such problems, and doesn't get carried away for no reason." "Yes, there were mishaps too." "Who hasn't had one in his life?" "Developer Charlie Depaux, a close friend of Van Den Buynens, was at the source of the Manhattan Plan and of the destruction of the Northern District." "We wanted to relate to New York." "New York has a tower that is 400 meters high." "In Belgium we could not because of Zaventem so we built four towers, each 100 meters high." "instead of a single tower 400 meters in height." "The city changed." "Here for instance." "Brussels has known an extraordinary boom, hasn't it, in twenty years." "It must be said that Brussels is special." "The inhabitants are quick to criticize." "Whatever you do..." "If the building is brown, he would like it to be pink." "Sure I wouldn't mind for all Belgian women to resemble Marilyn Monroe." "They do not, and I don't criticize them!" "I don't blame them!" "So when someone invests in a building..." "Okay, one doesn't like him, fine." "But to criticize the building, is that in good faith?" "I'm not sure." "He invested." "If you don't like him, say nothing." "If you like the building, say you like it." "But no one ever tells me "I like that."" "The Manhattan Plan is only one aspect of this growth." "Later they even started to destroy works by the sect's founders such as Horta's People's House." "perhaps to make the sites of these supposed passages to Bruzel disappear." "At that stage I believe the images of Bruzel that fascinated for over a century started to feel outmoded." "I have a really hard time believing that all these events are related to the Bruzel sect." "What surprises me is that we speak so little about it." "Because as soon as you look, the signs are there." "Think about the curious events that took place over the last few years." "The kidnapping of Van Den Buynens, the kidnapping of mayor Kuder." "Both were involved in Brussels' transformation." "And in turn, the least one can say is that their explanations left some skeptical." "Might they not have transited through Bruzel?" "TV news of 15 February 1989." "He told his odyssey." "He didn't say much about the conditions and circumstances of the ransom payment." "Released by his kidnappers after a month, Paul Van Buynens gives a press conference." "Ladies and gentlemen, first I would like to tell you how glad I am to see you again." "I don't know where I've just come from." "But I've come from far." "At that time, events started to accelerate." "For instance on 20 November 1993:" "A mysterious break-in last night in Brussels..." "Strangers broke into one of the oldest associations for the preservation of architectural heritage, the Archives of Modern Architecture." "Troubling fact: the burglars did not seem interested only in money or equipment." "It looks like a classic burglary:" "entry through the basement window, torn telephone wires, offices thoroughly searched." "Yet according to the association's members, the visit was not just about money." "Troubling detail indeed: some rooms were not even visited, and the robbers showed more interest in files than in ancient valuable books." "So was it vandalism, revenge, or even intimidation?" "I visited the Brussels city archives once again." "I wanted to interview the librarian about recent events." "That's when his colleagues informed me that he hadn't come to work in a few days." "He had left the keys to his apartment for me with one of his colleagues." "Under seeming disorder, the librarian had left me some clear signs." "The courthouse, or the "Palace of the Three Powers" was not far." "I was not really surprised." "An archivist, a collector, the librarian had gathered a nice ensemble of drawings by Robert Louis Marie De La Barque." "I had the impression of visiting the real Bruzel." "One understands how these images may have fascinated some." "Not all is clear in the book by Pierre Lidiaux." "Some pages were torn." "But contrary to what I had believed, The B File is not an essay, but a novel purporting to be a historical investigation." "One only had to read till the end to understand the artifice." "Lidiaux wrote: "One day the frantic search for Bruzel in Brussels' guts may perhaps become useless."" ""There will no longer be a point destroying Brussels to search for traces of Bruzel..."" ""because the two cities will have reached the point where they coincide."" ""They will have intertwined, resembling each other to the point that one will no longer be able to tell them apart."" "There remains one piece to add to the file." "As I was about to close my investigation, a video tape came in the mail." "Hi Claire." "I can call you Claire now, can't I, since you have visited my place." "We know each other a bit, don't we?" "Yes, Claire." "I'm the one who stole The B File." "You know the segment where the interviewer tells him that his book is only fiction..." "That's untrue, Claire." "Do you know why?" "Because I, Henry Van DeBael, found the passage, Claire." "After searching for so many years, I found it." "You know, it's written in the book." "Later today, Claire, I will pass into Bruzel." "I will bring this little camera, and soon, Claire, I will bring you pictures." "Soon." "Goodbye." "Goodbye, Claire." "The librarian never gave sign of life again." "But one certainty remains:" "the city that Lidiaux, De La Barque and the others had imagined in their dreams then in their nightmares, that city does exist." "Brussels has caught up with its reflection."