{"id":51153,"date":"2026-10-14T18:16:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T23:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=51153"},"modified":"2026-10-14T18:16:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T23:16:47","slug":"cinephiles-honored-by-cinephiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2026\/10\/14\/cinephiles-honored-by-cinephiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinephiles honored by Cinephiles!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Anyone who follows this blog will know that David and I have visited the Cinematek in Brussels many times to watch movies and take frame enlargements for our many projects. Indeed, we started way back in 1979, long before the blog was started in 2006.<\/p>\n

Belgium may be a small country, but its holdings of films from all over the world and every period since the beginnings of cinema are immense. I have often said that we could not have written Film History: An Introduction<\/em> without the hospitality of the Cinematek. I don’t think that’s much of an exaggeration. We visited other archives as well, but none as frequently. When David received a Fulbright grant for research abroad in 1984, we spent the autumn semester in Brussels, renting an apartment and settling in for what was the longest visit to an archive in our careers.<\/p>\n

Our relationship with the Cinematek has been one of mutual admiration. One result of this has been an immense honor that the Cinematek staff has bestowed upon us. They renamed the library of the archive after us. Above is the brand-new sign bearing that name, the Biblioth\u00e8que Bordwell-Thompson Bibliotheek, Belgium being a bilingual country.<\/p>\n

I was invited to visit the Cinematek during the inauguration events for the newly named library in late September\/early October.<\/p>\n

The offices and library of the Cinematek are housed in the Cleves-Ravenstein Mansion, part of a complex of buildings from the late XV Century to the beginning of the XVI Century. It has been renovated and restored, but the room dedicated to the library retains some of its decorations left over from antiquity. This fireplace and its painted hood and some other decorations around the walls lend the space a pleasant atmosphere. Some small display cases contained historical documents in the form of David’s signatures and sketches on some of our books.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During the opening event, two of our friends, Dominique Nasta (a professor at the Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles) and Lea Jacobs<\/a> (in town to lecture on Young Mr. Lincoln<\/em>) gave moving speeches on David’s life and work. A reception followed.<\/p>\n

I have been going to the Cinematek long enough to have known all four of its curators: Jacques Ledoux, the founder of the archive; Gabrielle Claes (below left), to whom Film History<\/em> was dedicated; Nicola Mazzanti, who contributed an entry<\/a> to our blog; and Tomas Leyers, the current curator (below right) whom I met for the first time on this trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had been asked to create a carte blanche<\/em> list of films that could be shown as a series in relation to the naming of the library. The earliest was Albert Capellani’s Germinal<\/em><\/a>, which was shown in the evening after the reception. (Tomas is introducing it above.) It was a treat to see that magnificent film in 35mm on the big screen.<\/p>\n

The last events of the inauguration were a Q&A with me, conducted by Anke Brouwer, and followed by the second film in my series, Maurice Tourneur’s The Last of the Mohicans, <\/em>also a treat on the big screen.<\/em> For those in or near Brussels, the series continues<\/a> until November 20.<\/p>\n

My profound thanks to Davy Hanegreefs (seen below introducing the inauguration program), who organized the inauguration events and to all the others who honored us with this link to the Cinematek and made my visit a total delight.<\/p>\n

From Brussels I went directly to Pordenone, Italy, for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. I’ll blog about that soon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photograph thanks to David Vanden Bossche<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who follows this blog will know that David and I have visited the Cinematek in Brussels many times to watch movies and take frame enlargements for our many projects. Indeed, we started way back in 1979, long before the blog was started in 2006. Belgium may be a small country, but its holdings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51153"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51167,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51153\/revisions\/51167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}