As well as the museum, the new name covers all of the activities of the Royal Belgian Film Archive. This ranges from its library and collection of 61,000 films, to its publications and DVDs and its educational and outreach activities throughout Belgium. "With this museum project we were thinking about how we could show our collection in a better and broader way - not only more screenings but all the parts of the collection," explains Gabrielle Claes, who oversees the entire organisation.

The importance of having an intriguing shop-front for the collection is essential, according to chief programmer Tonie De Waele. "One of the main missions of the Film Archive is to keep the history of cinema alive, and the best way to do that is to show films," he says. "We discover more and more that what we consider to be classics are in fact discoveries, certainly for a younger generation. In recent years, it is not uncommon to see people in their 20s and 30s who don't know who Charlie Chaplin is."

Tucked under Horta

The address of the Cinematek is one of the few things it shares with the old Film Museum: just look for the striking blue neon sign on Baron Hortastraat next to Bozar, the centre for fine arts. (The name "Cinematek", incidentally, has already attracted complaints from both Dutch and French speakers, and so is considered a success by the management.)

But behind the door, everything has changed. The old Film Museum, with its exhibition of artefacts from the early years of cinema and two screening rooms, was installed in a columned hall originally designed to display decorative arts. It wasn't exactly an ideal match, and for all the pleasant hours I've spent leaning on the columns while queuing up to see movies, there are less happy memories of being trapped behind the one that remained in the larger screening room.

All this had to change with the major renovations of Bozar to bring the building back to the lines originally conceived by Victor Horta. The hall of decorative arts had to be restored to its open-plan design, and, while this would be fine for the museum's exhibition space, what could be done with the screening rooms?
The radical solution, proposed by Ghent-based architects Robbrecht & Daem, was to dig beneath Bozar and construct two new cinemas below the ground. The idea has succeeded brilliantly (although not without some civil engineering difficulties which delayed work by nearly a year).

Now when you descend the stairs from street level to the Cinematek, you enter an open hall with light flooding in from above and previously blocked off views into the rest of Bozar. A wide staircase leads down to two new cinemas, and even these lower corridors benefit from daylight thanks to a strategically-placed light well.


Better exhibitions

There is much more to look at among the exhibitions on the first level. The artefacts that made up the old display have been remounted into a "wunderkammer", a cabinet of curiosities that aptly evokes the fairground atmosphere of early cinema and how far we have come in capturing the moving image. These range from magic lanterns and zoetropes to the sort of cameras used by pioneers like Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers.

New to Cinematek (and not as old as they sound) are the Moviolas, four booths with computer screens in which you can sample short films, documentaries and news reels from the archives. "It's a different kind of programming," Claes explains. "It's part of the film collection that is never shown in the screening rooms because it is not part of 'film history'. But we wanted to give the public access to that part of the collection, as well."
The Film Archive has already released some of this material on DVD, such as Docks and Dockers, a documentary on Belgian ports, and Expotopia, about the 1958 Brussels Expo. But there is much more, from films on Belgian carnivals and early animations, to news reels about the royal family and from the Congo. Around 100 hours of film has been digitised and is held on a central server, which also delivers selections of films to a curtained-off screening room at the back of the exhibition area. The selections will change and grow over time, depending on feedback.

Finally there is Remix, a matrix of eight video screens hanging from the ceiling on which fragments from the collection are shown. "It's like a detail in a painting," says Claes. "I believe strongly in the power of those excerpts. But the idea is also to tempt the public back to see the whole film when we show it."

It is also expected that from time to time artists and video makers will be offered these screens to make installations drawing on the film archive collections.

New cinemas

When I ask Tonie de Waele, head of programming, what the new cinema design will allow him to do that he couldn't do before, his response is immediate: "Watch movies comfortably". Seating in the old Film Museum was legendary for being hard on the cineaste, and the chunky black seats now installed feel much better.

As in the old Film Museum, there is one large and one small cinema, but now there is not that rigid division between the sound films in the large one and silents in the small. Both are equipped with sound, and both have pianos, allowing programmers to mix and match according to the anticipated audience.

The larger cinema has 117 seats, arranged in a steep rake that should ensure a clear view for everyone. The old cinema was practically flat, and it was easy to get stuck behind tall students or senior citizens too well brought up to slouch. It also has a new digital projector, which promises top quality results as digital prints of films become increasingly available.

The smaller cinema has just 29 seats, also raked, but still strangely reminiscent of the old museum's tiny screening room for silent films. The front row, almost in the pianist's pocket, still feels a bit too close to the screen for comfort.
As before, there is a daily programme, with afternoon screenings on some days. New is a regular series of free lunch-time short films. In all, there will be about 40 screenings every week, slightly up on the old museum. The ticket price has also crept up, from €2 to €3.

What's on?

Along with a monthly programme devoted to major personalities or periods in film history, there will be a number of new themes in the Cinematek programme. The anthology of films that was a staple of the old Film Museum has been refreshed and will be explored in new ways, through links and associations. "Sometimes the links are obvious, sometimes they will need an explanation," says De Waele. "They might be really important links in cinematography, other times it will be just a game - like a quote from one film that appears in another as an homage."
For example, in March Cinematek will screen Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which will be linked with Blade Runner and Playtime, perhaps also with one of Lang's American films.

There will also be a more structured approach to Belgian films, with local film critics Philippe Reynaert and Jan Temmerman invited to select and present a group of linked Belgian films every two months. In February this will be on the film industry itself, including Janssen en Janssens Draaien een Film (Janssen and Janssens Make a Film), a caustic commentary on Belgian cinema by Robbe de Hert and Luc Pien, Ça rend heureux (What Makes You Happy) by Joachim Lafosse, a more affectionate picture of low-budget filmmaking in Brussels, and Erik Van Looy's Shades.
Another initiative is the Duo programme, with each month a Belgian director invited to present one of his or her own films and follow it with a favourite film from the archive. First up is the pioneering Flemish animator Raoul Servais, who will show his own short films, followed by a programme of short films from the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin's Pay Day and Felix the Cat. In March it will be the Golden Palm-winning Dardenne Brothers and in April Jan Verheyen (Los).

Cinematek also wants to focus more on a monthly rendezvous for certain kinds of film. Appointments with experimental cinema, documentary and exploitation horror movies have already proved successful in the Ex-Shell building, which has been the temporary home of screenings while the renovations were under way. These will continue, along with spots for animation and rare or restored films from the archives.
Finally, the public will be given a chance to choose its own movies, with monthly polls hosted by the Cinebel website and in the newspaper La Libre Belgique. The first theme is crazy love, with a choice of 10 films ranging from In the Mood for Love to True Romance and Jules et Jim.

The opening weekend, 31 January and 1 February, will be a chance to explore the new film museum and dip into a rolling programme of films in both cinemas. After that, February promises retrospectives of the directors Vittorio De Sica, Erich Von Stroheim and animator Ralph Bakshi, a survey of Hollywood in the 1970s and a look at controversial silent film star Fatty Arbuckle.

online
www.cinematek.be

Cinematek near you
The film museum's programme covers most of Flanders

You don't have to go to Brussels to experience Cinematek's programme. For many years, now it has run Delicatessen, a series of classic films that tours venues in Bruges, Kortrijk, Ghent, Mechelen and Turnhout. The selection comes from a catalogue of around 250 films for which the Film Archive has local distribution rights.
"This programme has followed the declining curve of cinema going, so we have lost spectators in Flanders compared to five years ago. But that's to be expected if you look at cinema-going overall," says Tonie de Waele, head of programming for Cinematek. Once the new Cinematek is up and running smoothly, he hopes to be able to refresh this selection.

Other activities in Flanders are more academic and have a more enthusiastic public. At the Film Plateau in Ghent, the catalogue provides a programme themed for students at the city's university, which the general public can also attend. Also in Ghent, there is a screening each month in the Museum voor Industriële Archeologie en Textiel, with the idea that spectators come into the projection booth of the small cinema to see how it all works as well as watching the film.

In Antwerp, the Cinematek works closely with the Film Museum Antwerp that is now part of Muhka Media. "They do on a small scale what we are doing in Brussels, so a lot of prints come from our archive," says De Waele.

A highlight of 2009 will be the biennial Summer Film School in Bruges, eight intensive days of film study in English. Likely themes will be 1960, a magical year for cinema, and the films of Raoul Walsh. Meanwhile the lecture series Antomie van de Film that take place in Brussels is expected to go on tour to Ghent, Antwerp and Hasselt.
The one missing piece here is the promotion of classic Flemish film in Flanders. "In most cases the producers are Flemish, so if people really want to show them, they can get a print from the archive," De Waele says. "But it's not something that theatres are asking for. The new product, yes, but not the classics."

For that there is the Film Archives excellent DVD series Chronicle of Flemish Cinema, which includes 11 classic films and documentaries about each one, and explorations of significant films, such as 1943's De Vlaschaard (The Flax Field) and the new release Met onze jongens aan den Ijzer (With Our Boys on the Yser).

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