![]() Eye Film Institute Netherlands in 2012 | |
Established | 1952 |
---|---|
Location | IJpromenade 1, Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
Coordinates | 52°23′04″N4°54′02″E / 52.384411°N 4.900594°E Coordinates: 52°23′04″N4°54′02″E / 52.384411°N 4.900594°E |
Type | Film archive National museum Art museum History museum |
Collection size | 820,000 objects |
Public transit access | North exit of Amsterdam Central Station, ferry across IJ |
Website | eyefilm.nl |
Eye Filmmuseum is a film archive, museum, and cinema in Amsterdam that preserves and presents both Dutch and foreign films screened in the Netherlands.
Eye Filmmuseum is located in the Overhoeks neighborhood of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Its predecessor was the Dutch Historical Film Archive, founded in 1946 by David van Staveren, Felix Halverstad, and directors of Filmtheater Kriterion Piet Meerburg and Paul Kijzer. Following the accession of the archives of the Filmtheater de Uitkijk, the archive was renamed the Netherlands Filmmuseum under the leadership of its first director, film collector Jan de Vaal. The Filmmuseum was located in Kriterion and Stedelijk Museum until 1975, when de Vaal succeeded in acquiring a discrete space for the Filmmuseum in the Vondelpark Pavilion. [1] In 2009, Nederlands Filmmuseum merged with Holland Film, the Netherlands Institute for Film Education and the Filmbank [2] and plans were announced for a new home on the north bank of Amsterdam's waterfront. [3] The Filmmuseum was renamed the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and was officially opened on April 4, 2012, by Queen Beatrix. [4] [5]
The Eye Filmmuseum building is designed by Delugan Meissl Associated Architects, [6] whose other projects include the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. [7] The building features two gallery exhibition spaces, one 300-seat cinema, two 127-seat cinemas, and a fourth intimate cinema of about 67 seats. [8] One of the gallery spaces is devoted to a permanent exhibition on the technical and aesthetic histories of cinema. The exhibit includes historical equipment drawn from the Museum's collection of approximately 1,500 cinematic apparatuses, as well as an immersive presentation of about one hundred film clips from the Museum's archive, including Dutch and international films dating from the silent era and beyond. [9] The second gallery space is dedicated to experimental cinema or expanded cinema, a commitment which dates back to the Filmmuseum's founding and the weekly screenings it organized at the Stedelijk Museum in the 1950s under the emerging aegis of cinema as a "seventh art." [10] Past exhibitions in this space have focused on auteurs and cinematographers, as well as video artists and visual artists like Ryoji Ikeda and Anthony McCall. [11]
Eye opened its revamped Collection Center in 2016. The collection is made up of analog, digitized, and born-digital materials which are situated beside a sound restoration and digitization studio, a digital image restoration studio, and a grading and scanning suite. [12] The collection includes 210,000 cans of acetate film, 57,000 film titles, 2.5 petabytes of digital data, 82,000 posters, 700,000 photographs, 27,000 books, 2,000 journals, 1,500 pre-cinema and film apparatuses, 4,500 magic lantern slides, 7,000 musical scores, and 250,000 press cuttings. [12]
The collection originally consisted of films from the Uitkijk archive, compiled by members of the Dutch Filmliga (1927-1933). [12] After joining the International Federation of Film archives (FIAF) in 1947, the Filmmuseum started to actively collect and preserve Dutch film productions. Since then, a number of significant collections have been acquired, ranging from Dutch distributors (Desmet, Centra, and UIP); filmmakers (Joris Ivens, Johan van der Keuken, and Louis van Gasteren); and producers (Matthijs van Heijningen and Kees Kasander) to institutions and organizations, such as the Netherlands Film Academy; the Netherlands Film Fund; and the Netherlands Institute for Animation Film (NIAf). The collection also includes many seminal silent film works, Hollywood classics, international arthouse productions, and independent filmmakers of international renown. [12]
Eye stores 30,000 cans of flammable nitrate film in bunkers near the coast of North Holland in Overveen, Castricum and Heemskerk. These nitrate films date between 1896 and the mid-1950s and include a unique collection of 68mm film. [13] Two of these bunkers were built during the Second World War to protect Dutch art museum holdings from theft and destruction; Rembrandt's The Night Watch was among a few of the paintings which were stored in the Castricum bunker for part of the war. [14]
Recent silent film Eye restorations include the formerly lost film Beyond the Rocks (1922) starring Gloria Swanson, J'accuse! (1919) by Abel Gance, The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) by Germain Dulac, Raskolnikov (1923) by Robert Wiene, Flower of Evil (1915) by Carmine Gallone, and Shoes (1916) by Lois Weber. [15] [16] [17]
Restorations of Dutch films include Wan Pipel (1976) by Dutch-Surinamese director Pim de la Parra, Zeemansvrouwen (1930) by Henk Kleinmann, Karakter (1997) by Mike van Diem, Spetters (1980) by Paul Verhoeven, and Abel (1986) by Alex van Warmerdam. [18]
Other restorations include Eve (1962) by Joseph Losey, M (1931) by Fritz Lang, and We Can't Go Home Again (1979) by Nicholas Ray. [19]
Eye is performing a major film digitization and preservation project together with IBM and Thought Equity Motion, a provider of video platform and rights development services. The project involves scanning and storing more than 150 million discrete DPX files on LTO Gen5 Tape in the Linear Tape File System format. [20]
The institute's youth platform is named MovieZone [21] (previously MovieSquad). [22] [23]
In 2009, in collaboration with Amsterdam University Press (AUP), Eye began publishing academic books on restoration, preservation, archival and exhibition practices through their "Framing Film" series. [25] [26]
Title | Author | Year |
---|---|---|
From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition | Giovanna Fossati | 2009 |
Watch and Learn: Rhetorical Devices in Classroom Films after 1940 | Eef Masson | 2012 |
Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art: Challenges and Perspectives | Julia Noordegraaf, Vinzenz Hediger, Cosetta Saba, Barbara Le Maitre | 2013 |
Light Image Imagination | Martha Blassnigg | 2013 |
Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema | Tom Gunning, Joshua Yumibe, Giovanna Fossati and Jonathon Rosen | 2015 |
Filming for the Future: The Work of Louis van Gasteren | Patricia Pisters | 2015 |
Multiple Language Versions Made in BABELsberg: Ufa's International Strategy, 1929-1939 | Chris Wahl | 2015 |
Humour and Irony in Dutch Post-War Fiction Film | Peter Verstraten | 2016 |
Exposing the Film Apparatus. The Film Archive as a Research Laboratory | Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever | 2016 |
The Conscience of Cinema. The Works of Joris Ivens 1912-1989 | Thomas Waugh | 2016 |
Women in Silent Cinema. History of Fame and Failure | Annette Förster | 2017 |
The Film Museum Practice and Film Historiography. The Case of the Nederlands Filmmuseum (1946–2000) | Bregt Lameris | 2017 |
Images of Occupation in Dutch Film. Memory, Myth, and the Cultural Legacy of War | Wendy Burke | 2017 |
The Films of Bill Morisson. Aesthetics of the Archive | Bernd Herzogenrath | 2017 |
The Colour Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema | Giovanna Fossati, Victoria Jackson, Bregt Lameris, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe | 2018 |
The Greatest Films Never Seen. The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen | Claudy Op den Kamp | 2018 |
Images of Dutchness. Early cinema, Popular Visual Culture and the Emergence of a National Cliché, 1800-1914 | Sarah Dellmann | 2018 |
Performing Moving Images. Access, Archive, Affects | Senta Siewert | 2020 |
Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 921,402 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.
Cinema of the Netherlands refers to the film industry based in the Netherlands. Because the Dutch film industry is relatively small, and there is little or no international market for Dutch films, almost all films rely on state funding. This funding can be achieved through several sources, for instance through the Netherlands Film Fund or the public broadcast networks. In recent years the Dutch Government has established several tax shelters for private investments in Dutch films.
Threes Anna is a novelist, theatre and film maker.
Experimental filmmakers ask whether things could not be done differently. Underground films analyse and critique the mainstream film industry. They step back and reflect. Simultaneously, they take forward leaps to assess new options. Sometimes the makers are self-taught visual artists who make innovative work thanks to their original point of view. Other filmmakers primarily play with the medium film and seek an alternative to the dominant visual culture.
M.H. Laddé was a Dutch photographer and film director. He was the director of the first Dutch fictional film, the 1896 comedy Gestoorde hengelaar.
The following is a timeline of the history of the municipality of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Mannus Franken was a Dutch filmmaker who played an important role in the development of Indonesian cinema. He made his debut as a writer before working with Joris Ivens in producing two documentary films. In 1934 he was called to the Dutch East Indies by Albert Balink to help with the production of Pareh (1936). Franken stayed in the Indies until before World War II, making newsreels. After the war he returned to the country and continued this work. In 1949 Franken returned to the Netherlands, where he made another film before his death.
Albert Balink was a Dutch journalist and filmmaker who contributed to early Indonesian cinema. Born in the Netherlands, he began a career in film journalism in the Dutch East Indies. A self-taught filmmaker, in the mid-1930s, he released a documentary and two feature films, before immigrating to the United States and resuming his journalistic career.
East Is West is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Sidney Franklin and starring Constance Talmadge. The film is based on a 1918 Broadway stage play of the same name starring Fay Bainter as Ming Toy. It was remade as a talkie at Universal in 1930 with Lupe Vélez.
A Race for Life is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by D. Ross Lederman. Originally, the film was presumed to be lost. However, according to the Library of Congress Database, the film was found in the Netherlands. The film was released with a Vitaphone soundtrack with a synchronised musical score and sound effects.
ShortCutz Amsterdam is an annual film festival promoting short films in Amsterdam, Netherlands held the whole year through.
Fragment of an Empire is a 1929 Soviet silent drama film directed by Fridrikh Ermler.
The Floor Below is an American silent film starring Mabel Normand, Tom Moore and Helen Dahl. It was long thought lost, until a print was found "in the estate of a Dutch collector" by the Nederlands Filmmuseum.
Betty of Greystone is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Allan Dwan and produced by the Fine Arts Film Company. It was distributed by Triangle Film Corporation. The film starred Dorothy Gish and Owen Moore. It was partly filmed at Fort Lee, New Jersey. An incomplete print of the film is housed at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands.
Jeroen Eisinga is a contemporary video artist from the Netherlands. His work is characterised by its performance like character and its plots where an ordeal is often central. Simplicity is of key importance to Eisinga. His work is shot on film and is shot on 16mm as well as on 35mm format film.
Paul Sablon, later Paul Bourgeois, was a Brussels-born actor, director, cinematographer, writer and animal trainer, who worked in the early film industry, including for Pathé Frères in Europe and Universal in the United States.
Much of the river's north bank has been transformed in recent years, and the Eye Film Institute Netherlands stands out, a museum that Queen Beatrix opened officially on April 4.