The Royal Belgian Film Archive
(;
) is a
cinematheque located in the
Centre for Fine Arts, in
Brussels
Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
. It is often referred to as CINEMATEK (a
homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...
of ).
History
The cinematheque was established in 1938 as a
film archive by
Henri Storck,
André Thirifays, and
Piet Vermeylen.
In 2002 the
Film Museum founded by
Jacques Ledoux,
Constantin Brodzki and
Corneille Hannoset was integrated into the archive to become a cinematheque.
In 2009 it became known as "CINEMATEK".
Collection
Its collection include works on film by
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
,
Duchamp and
Léger.
As of 2018, the archive held 47,726 films and over a hundred-thousand film materials, with over eight thousand of the items originating from Belgium.
The challenges associated with managing the collection were discussed in a 2001 article
by
Gabrielle Claes who served as director of the archive from 1988 until 2011.
CINEMATEK led the organization of the EXPRMNTL film festival which was run four times: 1949, 1958, 1963, 1967, and 1974. The festival is depicted in the 2016 film Exprmntl which was shown in 2019 at the
London Short Film Festival.
Curators
*
Jacques Ledoux, 1948 to 1988
*
Gabrielle Claes, 1988 to 2011
* Wouter Hessels, 2011 to 2011
* Nicola Mazzanti, 2012 to 2020
* Tomas Leyers 2020 to
References
External links
ACE Association of European Film Archives and Cinematheques
1938 establishments in Belgium
Film archives in Europe
Archives in Belgium
FIAF-affiliated institutions
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