Cinema of Belgium refers to the film industry based in Belgium. Belgium is essentially a bi-lingual country divided into the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) north and the French-speaking south. There is also a small community of German speakers in the border region with Germany. Belgium is further a federal country made up of three regions (the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region and the Brussels-Capital Region) and three language communities (the Flemish Community (Dutch-speaking), the French (i.e., French-speaking) Community and the German-speaking Community). Due to these linguistic and political divisions it is difficult to speak of a national, unified Cinema of Belgium. It would be more appropriate to talk about Flemish or Dutch-language cinema of Belgium and Walloon or French-language cinema of Belgium.
History
Early history
While the invention of the cinématographe by the Lumière brothers is widely regarded as the birth of cinema, a number of developments in photography preceded the advent of film. Among the people pioneering work on animation devices was a Belgian professor of experimental physics Joseph Plateau. Plateau, who was active at the Ghent University invented an early stroboscopic device in 1836, the "phenakistiscope". It consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.
The first public projection in Belgium took place on 1 March 1896 at the Kings Gallery in Brussels. In the following years there was a surge in activity, initially dominated by the French industrial Charles Pathé. One of his assistants, Alfred Machin founded the first production studio in 1910; some of his films are still preserved in the Royal Filmarchive in Brussels. The first Belgian movie producer was Hippolyte De Kempeneer, who produced several interesting films until his studio burned down in 1923.
1930 - 1980
The 1930s however saw the first serious attempt at cinema. Several prominent figures such as Charles Dekeukeleire and Henri Storck experimented with new filming techniques and founded the Belgian Documentary School, which was long regarded as one of the highlights of Belgian Cinema. With the advent of sound, directors such as Jan Vanderheyden fully explored the possibilities of the medium, adapting popular literary works such as De Witte of Ernest Claes. De Witte proved to be a pivotal work in the history of Belgian Cinema. The film was a tremendous popular success and would spawn a future remake and a TV series that was widely acclaimed in its own right.
While attempts to produce a serious feature-length film were frequently met with difficulty, Belgian animated films slowly gained a reputation abroad, led by animators such as Raoul Servais, who won several awards throughout the sixties in a career that culminated with a Golden Palm for best short feature in 1979 for Harpya.
In 1975 the filmmaker Chantal Akerman created Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, starring Delphine Seyrig, that was selected for the Cannes Filmfestival. Although is was hailed as a pioneer in especially feminist film making, it didn't get a wide distribution, and Akerman herself was rarely mentioned in descriptions of Belgian cinema. In a critics' poll published by Sight and Sound in 2022, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named the greatest film of all time. Akerman's influence on feminist and avant-garde cinema is substantial, with at least one scholar calling her "one of the most significant directors of our times."
From 1964 on, film could be subsidized by the government, making way for a new generation of filmmakers such as André Delvaux (De Man Die Zijn Haar Kort Liet Knippen, after Johan Daisne's novel), Roland Verhavert (Pallieter, after Felix Timmermans's novel) and Harry Kümel.