Overview

First comprehensive history of Belgian cinema in the post-war decades. Between the liberation of 1944 and the mid-1960s, cinema in Belgium was both booming and fragile. Film theatres across the country attracted record audiences and were rebuilt into dazzling spaces, while local film production remained a precarious enterprise. This book brings that paradoxical landscape to life. It explores cinephile culture and institutional developments alongside popular comedies, art documentaries, colonial films, industrial productions and experimental shorts. Sixteen chapters show how cinema related to Belgium’s shifting identities in a period of reconstruction and transition. The book also challenges long-standing notions of a linguistic divide within Belgian cinema, showing that in the decades before regional film policies emerged, filmmakers and audiences largely operated within a shared national film culture. Generously illustrated and grounded in fresh archival research, this is the first comprehensive history of Belgian cinema in the post-war decades. Situating Belgian cinema within wider cultural, political and international contexts, it offers a compelling resource for film historians, cultural scholars, and heritage institutions.

Full Product Details

9789462705173

Table of Contents

Reviews

The contributions depict a vivid cinephilic culture in Belgium regarding art documentaries, industrial films, shorts, educational films, colonial movies. Moreover, the volume sheds a surprising light on the reigning assumption that the film climate in Belgium has been marked by a ‘split screen’ between Flemish and Francophone cinema. - Peter Verstraten, Leiden University

Author Information

Gertjan Willems is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Antwerp and Visiting Professor at Ghent University. Bjorn Gabriels is a film critic and researcher at the Universities of Antwerp and Namur, where he is in the final year of his doctoral dissertation on post-war Belgian documentary cinema. Bénédicte Rochet is Professor of History at the University of Namur.

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