Biography

Two fiction films interrupt his career as a documentary filmmaker. In 1937, Dekeukeleire directed a peasant drama scripted by Herman Teirlinck entitled 'Het Kwade Oog/Le Mauvais Oei'l based on his play "De vertraagde film "(1922), in the vicinity of Oudenaarde (Flemish Ardennes) with non-professional actors. The second, The Hunt for the Cloud, a failed science fiction film, led him into a dead end. In order to get out of it, the filmmaker called on two journalists (Antoine Allard and Armand Bachelier) to write additional scenes full of self-mockery with Paul Frankeur (who, two years earlier, had played in the only feature film of fiction by Henry Storck). This did not save the film (renamed An Atomic Cloud) which had no career. This failure tarnished the morale of the filmmaker who complained of lack of financial means.

For his first film, Combat de Boxe, produced in 1927, Dekeukeleire staged a boxing match in his room based on a poem by Paul Werrie. Dekeukeleire recruited two professional boxers, one of which was the Belgian lightweight boxing champion. The abrupt changes of scale, the use of overprinting, and the use of very short shots alternating between the spectators and the fighters made this film unusually complex for the Twenties.

In 1929, he filmed Histoire de détective, a surrealist inspiration.

As an informed film buff, he also drew his inspiration from visual artists such as Man Ray, Fernand Léger and Marcel Duchamp.

Alongside the production of films, he practiced also the profession of film critic.