Introduction
Biography Raoul Servais (Ostend, 01.05.1928 – Leffinge, 17.03.2023)
Raoul Servais is one of the founding figures of European animated film in the 1960s. His work is celebrated worldwide for its unique visual language, balancing between magical realism, satire and sharp social criticism.
With fifteen short films and the animated feature film Taxandria (1994), he builds an impressive body of work. He receives more than sixty international awards at numerous film festivals. For the surrealist film Harpya (1979), he receives the Golden Palm, the first time a Belgian film received that distinction.
In addition to his work as a filmmaker, Servais is also a pioneer in education. He establishes the animation programme at KASK in Ghent and inspires generations of filmmakers, far beyond national borders
RAOUL SERVAIS: Not to War
RAOUL SERVAIS: Not to War offers a look at the work and worldview of Raoul Servais — an artist shaped by war experience and imagination..
The World Wars leave a lasting mark on his youth and shape the rest of his life. Through his mother’s and uncles’ stories, he grows up with memories of the First World War.
In May 1940, just twelve years old, he is confronted with the harsh reality of the Second World War. He must leave his familiar surroundings and flees with his mother and brother to France, where he narrowly escapes death on multiple occasions. He later describes these defining experiences in his book Memories of War.
During the years of occupation, he comes to know the many faces of war: restricted freedom, scarcity and food rationing, propaganda and collaboration, resistance and deportation, the persecution of Jews, and going into hiding to avoid forced labour in Germany.
Yet Servais, despite fear and hardship, holds on to what makes life bearable: imagination and humour. This strength runs as a thread through his life and work. From his experiences of both world wars, he creates animation films such as Chromophobia (1965), Operation X-70 (1971), Tank (2015) and his final short film Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy, 2022), made together with Rudy Pinceel.
The exhibition gathers original animation cels, sketches and archive material, and screens five of Servais's short films in their entirety alongside an exclusive interview recorded during the production of Rudy Pinceel’s documentary SERVAIS.
In a world where conflict and polarisation are once again on the rise, his message sounds more urgent than ever. Not to War becomes more than a slogan — it is an enduring call for empathy and humanity.
Montage SERVAIS
A montage featuring previously unseen footage, created for the documentary SERVAIS by Rudy Pinceel. © House of the Dingo / Rudy Pinceel 2026.
French excerpts read aloud from the book Souvenirs de guerre (English version: Memories of War). Excerpts shown from the short films Operation X-70 (1971), Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy, 2022), Chromophobia (1965) and Tank (2015).
The DVD Raoul Servais with short films and the documentary SERVAIS, and the book Memories of War, are both available at the Tourist Information Point.
Timeline and filmography
Timeline
1928, 1 May – Raoul Servais is born in Ostend and grows up in a middle-class family. On Sundays he watches films from his father’s film library, including Felix the Cat and Charlie Chaplin. He also discovers the work of James Ensor. His father gives him a 9.5mm Pathé Baby film projector.
1940 – During the Second World War, Ostend is bombed. The family loses all its possessions. His father is taken prisoner of war; his mother flees to northern France with her two sons.
1944 – Ostend is a war zone. The family is able to move in with relatives in Ghent. After the liberation, Servais works as a decorator at the Innovation department store in Ghent.
1945 – He enrolls in the Decorative and Monumental Arts department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent. With his teacher’s help, he makes his first animated short on 9.5mm: Spokenhistorie (Ghost Story).
1950 – With the pay he saves during his military service, he buys a second-hand 8mm film camera.
1951 – Artist Maurice Boel introduces Servais to abstract painting, film art and left-wing discussion groups. That same year he visits various animation film studios.
1953 – Together with a team, Servais paints Le Domaine Enchanté by René Magritte in the Casino of Knokke.
1955 – He works as artistic colour consultant for filmmaker Henri Storck.
1959 – Havenlichten (Harbour Lights) wins the main prize at the National Festival of Belgian Film in Antwerp. With the prize money he purchases a professional second-hand Debrie 35mm camera.
1960 – Servais becomes a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent.
1963 – He establishes an animation film department at KASK in Ghent – the first animation training programme on the European continent.
1965 – Thanks to Paul Louyet of the film department of the Ministry of Education, Servais receives 500,000 Belgian francs and carte blanche for a new film. This leads to Chromophobia.
1966 – Chromophobia wins the first prize at the fourth international festival for children and adolescents in Tehran (Iran).
1973 – Servais is elected a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium (KVAB).
1979 – Harpya wins the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. It is the first time a Belgian filmmaker receives this award.
1984 – The company Agfa-Gevaert files a patent for the combination of live action and animation, known as « Servaisgraphy ».
1985 – He serves as president of ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation) until 1994. In 1985, together with Pierre Vlerick (artist and director of the Royal Academy KASK), he develops the concept for the wall decoration in the Houba-Brugmann metro station for the MIVB.
1986 – He establishes his own production company Anagram.
1989 – The Raoul Servais Foundation is established (later the Raoul Servais Fund).
1994 – Premiere of his only feature film Taxandria at the Ghent Film Festival.
1998 – Several years after the world premiere of Taxandria, Servais revisits his original ideas and applies Servaisgraphy in Nachtvlinders (Nocturnal Butterflies), a tribute to Paul Delvaux.
1999 – An exhibition about his work takes place for the first time in Annecy and subsequently travels the world (São Paulo, New York, Valenciennes, Valladolid and Ghent).
2008 – Servais receives an honorary doctorate from Ghent University.
2012, 20 October – His wife Nicole Vander Vorst, his unconditional pillar of support, passes away.
2013 – He asks Jacques Dubrulle to help preserve his work and make it accessible.
2016 – Servais receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb.
2018 – He is made an honorary citizen of Ostend. At Mu.ZEE, he is given his own wing, alongside Ensor and Spilliaert.
2019 – Servais donates a large part of his oeuvre to the King Baudouin Foundation and asks Het Communicatiehuis/Raoul Servais Collection to manage his rights and archives.
2021 – The King Baudouin Foundation presents an exhibition at the BELvue Museum: Raoul Servais. A World Between Magic and Realism, curated by François Schuiten.
2022 – Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy, co-directed by Rudy Pinceel) has its world premiere at Film Fest Ghent. Raoul Servais receives the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award for his entire body of work.
2023, 17 March – Raoul Servais passes away at the age of 94 at his home in Leffinge.
2025, 27 November – Opening of the exhibition The Wonder of Raoul Servais at the Sint-Pietersabdij (St Peter's Abbey) in Ghent (on view until end of 2027).
2026 – Taxandria is currently being restored and digitised in collaboration with CINEMATEK (Royal Film Archive), the King Baudouin Foundation and Raoul Servais Collection.
Filmography
Havenlichten /Harbour Lights *
ft 16 mm / 10’ / 1960
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Omleiding November / November Diversion
ft 16 mm / 13’ / 1962
Production: Raoul Servais
De valse noot / The False Note *
ft 35 mm / 10’ / 1963
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Chromophobia *
ft 35 mm / 10’ / 1965
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Sirene *
ft 35 mm / 9’30” / 1968
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Goldframe *
ft 35 mm / 5’ / 1969
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
To speak or not to speak *
ft 35 mm / 11’ / 1970
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Operation X-70 *
ft 35 mm / 9’30” / 1971
Production: Anagram
Pegasus *
ft 35 mm / 8’30” / 1973
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Het lied van Halewyn/ Halewyn’s Song
ft 35 mm / 12’ / 1976
Production: Luna Film-Corona Cinematografica
Harpya *
ft 35 mm / 9’ / 1979
Production: Anagram
Taxandria **
ft 35 mm / 90’ / 1994
Production: Iblis Films, Bibo TV&Film, Les Producties Drussart & Prascino Pictures
Nachtvlinders / Nocturnal Butterflies *
ft 35 mm / 8’ / 1998
Production: Anagram, Atelier AAA Annecy, Channel Four
Atraksion *
ft 35 mm / 10’ / 2001
Production: Anagram, Oeil pour Oeil Lille
Winterdagen / Winter Days (in opdracht van / commissioned by Kihachiro Kawamoto)
ft 35 mm / 50” / 2003
Production: Imagica Tokyo
Tank *
ft digital / 6’20” / 2015
Production: Santeboetiek & Lunanime
Der Lange Kerl / The Tall Guy *
ft digital / 14’50” / 2022
Co-realisation: Rudy Pinceel
Production: Creative Conspiracy, Tchack & Raoul Servais Collection
* These short films are available digitally (in collaboration with CINEMATEK).
** Taxandria is currently being restored and digitised in collaboration with CINEMATEK, the King Baudouin Foundation and Raoul Servais Collection
Chromophobia and Operation X-70
Chromophobia (1965) and Operation X-70 (1971) rank among the most forward-thinking films of Raoul Servais. In these early works, the themes that would define his entire career are already clearly visible: the struggle against oppression, conformism and dehumanisation.
In Chromophobia, Servais portrays a suffocating world in which colour – a symbol of freedom and creativity – is systematically erased by a cold, grey power. What begins as a game between colour and black-and-white grows into a universal parable about totalitarian systems and fear of difference. The film was internationally acclaimed and marked his breakthrough as a leading voice in animated film.
In Operation X-70, he goes a step further. Here, the war machine takes on an abstract, technological face. Science and power merge into a threatening force that reduces the human being to a pawn. Although the film explicitly refers to the Vietnam War, it breathes the broader atmosphere of the Cold War. It reflects once again Servais’ enduring concern about armament, control and moral decay.
Together, these films show how Servais developed a distinctly engaged visual language at an early stage. His animation is not an escape from reality, but a way of looking at it critically. With poetic power and visual creativity, he makes a clear choice for freedom, imagination and humanity.
Filmbox 1
Chromophobia (1965)
In Chromophobia, Servais depicts a grey, totalitarian city where colour is forbidden. When a rainbow appears, the regime cracks down hard. The film is a sharp allegory about dictatorship and conformism, created in the context of the Cold War. Servais shows how fear of the ‘other’ can lead to dehumanisation.
With this short film, he wins in 1966, as the first Belgian filmmaker, the First Prize for Short Film at the Venice Film Festival.
ft 35 mm / 10’ / 1965
Production: Absolon Films-Anagram
Operation X-70 (1971)
A powerful state develops a gas that does not kill people but renders them numb and places them in a strange condition. When the X-70 bombs accidentally fall on a friendly state, disturbing mutations arise. This way Servais shows the risks of military technology and punctures the illusion of a ‘clean’ war.
For this film he engraved original etching plates, whose prints serve as backdrops. This technique gives the film a threatening, almost apocalyptic atmosphere.
The film combines this visual innovation with a clear warning: those who experiment with destruction lose control over humanity and nature.
With Operation X-70, he wins in 1972 the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
ft 35 mm / 9’30” / 1971
Production: Anagram
Tank and Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy)
Tank (2015) and Der Lange Kerl (2022) form the conclusion of a lifetime of imagining against violence. In these late short films, Raoul Servais returns to a theme that never left him as an artist and human being: the absurdity of war.
Marked as a child by two world wars, Servais continues to search for images that warn and move. He does so not through lofty rhetoric, but with sharp metaphors, bitter humour and a unique visual language in which reality and imagination merge. In his work, war appears not as a heroic spectacle, but as a dehumanising force.
In Tank, the war machine itself becomes the protagonist: a menacing symbol of blind power that crushes everything in its path. In Der Lange Kerl – made together with Rudy Pinceel – evil takes on a human face: that of a dictatorial figure who grows into a mythical monster.
Both films show how Servais, even in old age, remains true to his critical view of power and violence.
Filmbox 2
Tank (2015)
Tank is inspired by the poem Le Tank by the French pacifist poet Pierre-Jean Jouve. The poem concerns the deployment of tanks by the British against the Germans during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War (1916). Servais describes his film as a free interpretation of that first assault.
The film portrays the traumatic experience of both the soldiers in the trenches and the tank crew. It makes clear how the modern war machine reduces the human being to a cog in an inhuman system.
ft digital / 6’20” / 2015
Production: Santeboetiek & Lunanime
Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy, 2022)
This final short film by Raoul Servais is set at the Flemish front in November 1914. In an abandoned war landscape, a soldier encounters a mysterious, gigantic figure: ‘der lange kerl’ – the symbol of the futility of violence.
Servais combines historical reality with mythical imagination and shows how the individual is swept along by forces beyond his understanding. The film represents a powerful, late return to his indictment against war and dehumanisation.
ft digital / 14’50” / 2022
Co-direction: Rudy Pinceel
Production: Creative Conspiracy, Tchack & Raoul Servais Collection
Servaisgraphy
After already using his own technique in Harpya to combine live action and animation, Raoul Servais developed a new process that allowed him to work faster and at relatively low cost: ‘Servaisgraphy’.
The actors are filmed on black-and-white film in a completely white environment. The 35mm footage is then analysed and selected frame by frame. These images are enlarged onto special transparent photographic paper, which is converted in a machine to an inverted negative – that is, a positive image – on light-sensitive animation cels (transparent acetate sheets).
The animation cels on which the actors are visible in grey tones are then coloured on the reverse side. They are placed on top of painted backgrounds and filmed frame by frame, creating a seamless blend of reality and drawing.
After Nachtvlinders (Nocturnal Butterflies), Servais no longer uses this technique, as the rapid development of computer technology renders it virtually obsolete. For his later films such as Taxandria, Atraksion, Tank and Der Lange Kerl (The Tall Guy), he switches to computer techniques.
Nevertheless, ‘Servaisgraphy’ remains a unique milestone in the history of animated film.
Construction of an animation cel
- The actors are filmed on 35mm black-and-white film against a completely white background.
- The correct frame is selected from this footage.
- The image is transferred onto cellophane sheets (special transparent paper).
- These sheets are placed in a special machine, which creates an inverted negative. This produces a positive image on light-sensitive, transparent acetate sheets (animation cels).
- The characters are then coloured on the reverse side.
- The two sheets together are placed on a background set.
- The whole is then filmed frame by frame, producing the final animation.
Nachtvlinders (Nocturnal Butterflies)
Although Nachtvlinders is not about war, this short film must not be absent, as it is a key work in Servais' oeuvre.
Nachtvlinders is the only film executed entirely in ‘Servaisgraphy’ and is clearly inspired by the work of painter Paul Delvaux. The film unites dream and reality in a poetic universe of nocturnal stations, silent figures and subtle eroticism.
Although ‘Servaisgraphy’ proved to be an effective way of integrating live action into hand-drawn sets, the technique gradually became obsolete due to the rapid development of computer technology. With Nachtvlinders, however, Servais achieves a unique synthesis of craftsmanship, film and painting.
Nachtvlinders (Nocturnal Butterflies, 1998)
The short film Nachtvlinders by Raoul Servais, inspired by the work of Paul Delvaux, is set in a nocturnal railway waiting room. There, a man – fascinated by a moth – finds himself in a dream-like world. In this uncanny space, still figures slowly come to life. With his unique Servaisgraphy – a combination of live-action and animation – Servais creates a poetic and mysterious film without dialogue.
With Nachtvlinders, Raoul Servais won the Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 1998.
ft 35 mm / 8’ / 1998
Production: Anagram, Atelier AAA Annecy, Channel Four
