Internet resource(s)
- Belgian Film CommissionThis site is where you can find all the information you need about the variety of initiatives supporting audiovisual productions in Belgium, both financially and logistically.
- The Netherlands Film FestivalEvery year in early autumn, the Dutch film industry and public gather at the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) to see, assess, discuss and celebrate the best and newest cinematic offerings from the Netherlands.
- The Netherlands Film FundThe Netherlands Film Fund is the national agency responsible for supporting film production and film related activities in the Netherlands.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
Introduction to cinema in Belgium, Luxembourg & The Netherlands
This page highlights film resources for the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
[Source of map: "Benelux" from Wikipedia, 05/28/2021, (Shaund)]
Belgium
Belgium’s first screening of moving images took place at a Lumière Cinématographe show in Brussels on 10 November 1895; and from around 1903 films were exhibited in fairgrounds and music halls run by French or Dutch entrepreneurs, who also shot most of the country’s early actualities. Among the first domestically made fiction films were Le moulin maudit/The Accursed Mill (1909) and Maudite soit la guerre/A Curse on War (1914), both by Frenchman Alfred Machin, who made numerous films in French for international distribution at the Pathé studios near Ghent. The first Flemish film to be made in bicultural Belgium was De Storm in het Leven/Stormy Life (Karel van Rijn, 1920). Most films seen by Belgian audiences in these years, however, were imports from France or the US. German occupation during World War I essentially put paid to domestic production, and after the war the market was almost completely dominated by US films, which by 1930 accounted for 70 per cent of films screened in Belgium. Belgium’s first sound-on-film feature was Le plus joli rêve/The Sweetest Dream (Gaston Schoukens, 1931); but the coming of sound further split Belgian cinema culture along linguistic lines, with the more exportable French-language films dominating local production even more than previously. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Belgium, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 28 May. 2021
The Netherlands
Moving images were first seen in the Netherlands at an exhibition of the Lumière Cinématographe in Amsterdam on 12 March 1896; and from 1901 the showmen brothers Albert and Willy Mullens shot short actualities of local subjects. Because Dutch cinemas have relied largely on foreign imports, the Netherlands has not had a strong production sector, though the blockade on the import of films during World War I is said to have boosted domestic film production during the war years. At the same time, the country boasts a long-standing independent cinema culture: the founding in 1927 of one of the world’s first film societies established a tradition of independent film criticism, while the Dutch documentary school of the 1930s and beyond is regarded as the country’s major contribution to international cinema: the work of Joris Ivens (Regen/Rain, 1929) and Bert Haanstra (whose short documentary Glas/Glass (1958) won the first-ever Academy Award for a film made in the Low Countries) is particularly prominent. The Netherlands is also renowned for children’s films, which sell well for television internationally. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Netherlands, film in the. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 28 May. 2021
Searching the online catalog
You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included.
Introductory reading(s)
The cinema of the Low Countries by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .B425 C56 2004ISBN: 9781904764007Films of the Low Countries have long been regarded as isolated texts. This book points to the interconnectedness between Low Countries films from different genres, regions, languages, and formats. Building on each film's relationship with its particular cultural context, the volume presents twenty-four especially commissioned essays by renowned writers, each one focusing on one key film. ...
Directory of world cinema: Belgium by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .B4 D57 2013ISBN: 9781783200085Is there such a thing as a single Belgian cinema? A country that is culturally and linguistically divided between the Dutch-speaking Flanders and the francophone Brussels and Wallonia, Belgium is a contested site, and its fragile unity continues to be challenged by separatists. Nevertheless, the filmic output of this divided country merits serious attention, and Directory of World Cinema: Belgium is the comprehensive guides it richly deserves.
Jean Desmet and the early Dutch film trade by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9053564632The Netherlands Film Museum's Desmet Collection contains the estate of Dutch cinema owner and film distributor Jean Desmet (1875-1956): almost nine hundred European and American films of all genres, a collection of publicity material, and a massive business archive. These three sources form the basis of this book, the first comprehensive reconstruction of Desmet's career. From his nomadic beginnings as a traveling showman to his successful switch to permanent cinema operation and film distribution, Blom shows how Desmet's fortunes encapsulated a series of structural changes within the new culture of the cinema.
Selected book titles
The cinema of the Dardenne Brothers: responsible realism by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998.2 .D374 2013ISBN: 9780231163293The brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have established an international reputation for their emotionally powerful realist cinema. Inspired by their home turf of Lige-Seraing, a former industrial hub of French-speaking southern Belgium, they have crafted a series of fiction films that blends acute observation of life on the social margins with moral fables for the postmodern age. This volume analyses the brothers' career from their leftist video documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s through their debut as directors of fiction films in the late 1980s and early 1990s to their six major achievements from The Promise (1996) to The Kid with a Bike (2011), an oeuvre that includes two Golden Palms at the Cannes film festival, for Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005).
Humour and irony in Dutch post-war fiction film by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9789089649430Dutch cinema is typically treated only in terms of prewar films or documentaries, leaving postwar fictional film largely understudied. At the same time, a Hollandse School, first named in the 1980s, has developed through deadpan, ironic films like those of director and actor Alex van Warmerdam. Using seminal theories on humor and comedy, this book explores a number of Dutch films using the notion of categories, such as low-class comedies, neurotic romances, deliberate camp, and grotesque satire. With its original approach, this study makes surprising connections between Dutch films from various decades.
Jean Desmet's dream factory: the adventurous years of film (1907-1916) by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .N4 J43 2014ISBN: 9789462081741The early twentieth-century film industry grew with the help of passionate entrepreneurs like Jean Desmet (1875-1956), who went from being a carnival showman to one of the Netherlands' leading cinema operators, and finally became the country's first professional film distributor. The first decades of film were its most adventurous years--a period of astonishing technological development, artistic ingenuity and creative entrepreneurship.
Split screen: Belgian cinema and cultural identity by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .B4 M67 2001ISBN: 9780791447482Explores the historical evolution of Belgian cinema as well as its contemporary situation within the evolving contexts of global media and European unity.
Finding journal articles
Articles and other writings about films from Belgium, Luxembourg or The Netherlands can be found in many publications. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about these national cinemas.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more Benelux films in the library's collections.
Hop by Call Number: Streaming videoISBN: 9781934121986All Justin and his father want to do is sit down and enjoy a soccer game together. This simple act between father and son sparks a chain of events leading to Justin's father's deportation. On the run Justin must embark on a thrilling adventure to re-unite with his father. But in order to fight the system, he must enlist the help of a former anarchist. Together they will need to apply the secret of the Hop.
Maidentrip by Call Number: Streaming videoFourteen-year-old Laura Dekker sets out, camera in hand, on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone. In the wake of a year-long battle with Dutch authorities that sparked a global storm of media scrutiny, Laura now finds herself far from land, family and unwanted attention, exploring the world in search of freedom, adventure, and distant dreams of her early youth at sea.
Rapado by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1166420-year old Lucio shaves his head in mourning for his stolen motorcycle. He decides to replace it by stealing one himself. Thwarted several times, he finally buys a moped which he guards cautiously. ( A Dutch/Argentine production).
Rien à déclarer = Nothing to declare by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #17688A Belge-Francophobe customs officer is forced to team up with a Frenchman during the elimination of the Franco-Belge borders in the 90s.
Rosetta by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #15217The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads with Rosetta, an intense verite drama that closely follows a poor young woman struggling to hold onto a job to support herself and her alcoholic mother. It's a swift and simple tale made revelatory by the raw, empathic way in which the directors render Rosetta's desperation, keeping the camera nearly perched on her shoulder throughout.
Rundskop = Bullhead by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #16327A young cattle farmer is approached by a veterinarian to make a deal with a notorious beef trader.
