Established | 1938 |
---|---|
Location | Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, BE |
Coordinates | 50°50′39″N 4°21′37″E / 50.844172°N 4.360152°E |
Type | cinematheque |
Founder | Jacques Ledoux, Constantin Brodzki and Corneille Hannoset |
Website | www |
The Royal Belgian Film Archive[1] (French: Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique;[2] Dutch: Koninklijk Belgisch Filmarchief[3]) is a cinematheque located in the Centre for Fine Arts, in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as CINEMATEK (a homophone of cinémathèque).
The cinematheque was established in 1938 as a film archive[1] 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.[4]
Its collection include works on film by Man Ray, Duchamp and Léger.[6] 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.[7] The challenges associated with managing the collection were discussed in a 2001 article[7] by Gabrielle Claes who served as director of the archive from 1988 until 2011.[8][9]
CINEMATEK led the organization of the EXPRMNTL film festival which was run four times: 1949, 1958, 1963, 1967, and 1974.[10][11] The festival is depicted in the 2016 film Exprmntl which was shown in 2019 at the London Short Film Festival.[12][13]