Eye Filmmuseum is a film archive, museum, and cinema in Amsterdam that preserves and presents both Dutch and foreign films screened in the Netherlands.

Location and history

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 The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

until 1975, when de Vaal succeeded in acquiring a discrete space for the Filmmuseum in the Vondelpark Pavilion. In 2009, Nederlands Filmmuseum merged with Holland Film, the Netherlands Institute for Film Education and the

Filmbank 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 ...

and plans were announced for a new home on the north bank of Amsterdam's waterfront. The Filmmuseum was renamed the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and was officially opened on April 4, 2012, by Queen Beatrix.

Buildings

Eye Filmmuseum

The Eye Filmmuseum building is designed by Delugan Meissl Associated Architects,Schuetze, Christopher F. (12 September 2013)
A New Dutch Focus on Film.
'' The New York Times'' whose other projects include the

Porsche Museum The Porsche Museum is an automobile museum in the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart, Germany on the site of carmaker Porsche. History The original Porsche museum opened in 1976 in a side-road near the Porsche factory. It was a relatively s ...

in Stuttgart. The building features two gallery exhibition spaces, one 300-seat cinema, two 127-seat cinemas, and a fourth intimate cinema of about 67 seats. 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. The second gallery space is dedicated to experimental cinema or

expanded cinema {{italic title ''Expanded Cinema'' by Gene Youngblood (1970), the first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts.Manovich, Lev. 2002. "Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970–2000". Leonardo. 35 (5) ...

, a commitment which dates back to the Filmmuseum's founding and the weekly screenings it organized at the

in the 1950s under the emerging aegis of cinema as a " seventh art." Past exhibitions in this space have focused on auteurs and cinematographers, as well as video artists and visual artists like

Ryoji Ikeda Ryoji Ikeda (池田亮司 ''Ikeda Ryōji'', born 1966) is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noi ...

and

Anthony McCall Anthony McCall (born 1946) is a British-born New York based artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with "Line Describing a Cone," in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves ...

Eye Collection Center

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. 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 The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a sin ...

slides, 7,000 musical scores, and 250,000 press cuttings.

EYE Film Institute Netherlands - Eye Study - Collection building - Front - 2017

The collection originally consisted of films from the Uitkijk archive, compiled by members of the Dutch Filmliga (1927-1933). 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 Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are '' A Tale of the Wind'', '' The Spanish Earth'', ''Rain'', ''...A Valparaiso'', ''M ...

Johan van der Keuken Johan van der Keuken (; 4 April 1938 – 7 January 2001) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, Van der Keuken produced 55 documentary films, six of which won eight awards. He also wrot ...

, and

Louis van Gasteren Louis Alphonse van Gasteren (20 November 1922 – 10 May 2016) was a Dutch film director, film producer, and artist. He was born in Amsterdam. He is the son of actor Louis van Gasteren Sr. and singer Elise Menagé Challa, and the brother of actre ...

); and producers ( Matthijs van Heijningen and Kees Kasander) to institutions and organizations, such as the

Netherlands Film Academy The Netherlands Film Academy ( nl, Nederlandse Filmacademie) (NFA) was founded in 1958. The academy is the only recognised institute in the Netherlands that offers training to prepare for the work in the various crew disciplines. Specialisation ...

; 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.

Nitrate Bunkers

Martin van Leuven standing before the Eye Filmmuseum nitrate bunker in Overveen

Eye stores 30,000 cans of flammable nitrate film in bunkers near the coast of North Holland in

Overveen Overveen is a village in North Holland in the Netherlands, in the municipality of Bloemendaal. Overveen lies on the eastern fringe of the North Sea dunes. To the east it borders the built-up areas of Haarlem. A few kilometres to the west of the ...

Castricum Castricum () is a municipality and a town in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. Castricum is a seaside town in the province of North Holland. It draws in a fair share of tourists who mainly come to visit the beach and nearby dune ...

and Heemskerk. These nitrate films date between 1896 and the mid-1950s and include a unique collection of 68mm film. 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.

Restorations

Recent silent film Eye restorations include the formerly lost film '' Beyond the Rocks'' (1922) starring Gloria Swanson, '' J'accuse!'' (1919) by

Abel Gance Abel Gance (; born Abel Eugène Alexandre Péréthon; 25 October 188910 November 1981) was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: ''J ...

, ''

The Seashell and the Clergyman ''The Seashell and the Clergyman'' (french: La Coquille et le clergyman) is a 1928 French experimental film directed by Germaine Dulac, from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud. It premiered in Paris on 9 February 1928. Synopsis The film fo ...

'' (1928) by Germain Dulac, ''

Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov ( pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform rus, Родион Романович Раскольников, Rodión Románovich Raskólʹnikov, rədʲɪˈon rɐˈmanəvʲɪtɕ rɐˈskolʲnʲɪkəf) is the fictional protago ...

'' (1923) by

Robert Wiene Robert Wiene (; 27 April 1873 – 17 July 1938) was a film director of the silent era of German cinema. He is particularly known for directing the German silent film ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' and a succession of other German Expressionism, ...

, '' Flower of Evil'' (1915) by Carmine Gallone, and '' Shoes'' (1916) by Lois Weber. Restorations of Dutch films include '' Wan Pipel'' (1976) by Dutch-Surinamese director Pim de la Parra, ''

Zeemansvrouwen '' Zeemansvrouwen '' (1930) is a Dutch film directed by Henk Kleinmann, and was intended to be the first ever sound film produced in the Netherlands. Instead, it became the last official Dutch silent film and the last film that would appear betw ...

'' (1930) by Henk Kleinmann, '' Karakter'' (1997) by Mike van Diem, '' Spetters'' (1980) by Paul Verhoeven, and '' Abel'' (1986) by Alex van Warmerdam. Other restorations include '' Eve'' (1962) by

Joseph Losey Joseph Walton Losey III (; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blackliste ...

, '' M'' (1931) by Fritz Lang, and ''

We Can't Go Home Again ''We Can't Go Home Again'' is an experimental feature film directed by Nicholas Ray in collaboration with his film students at Binghamton University. Ray and the students play fictionalized versions of themselves. The film was the major project o ...

'' (1979) by Nicholas Ray.

Projects

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 Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is a SMPTE standard (ST 268-1:2014). The file format is most commonly used to represent the density of each colour channel of a scanned n ...

files on

LTO LTO may refer to: Science and technology * Linear Tape-Open, a computer storage magnetic tape format * Link-time optimization, a technique used by compilers to optimize software * Low Temperature Oxide, a form of silicon dioxide used in microfabri ...

Gen5 Tape in the Linear Tape File System format.

Annual Events

* International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November) * Eye International Conference (May)

Publications

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.

Collection

The Adopted Brother - Christy Cabanne, D.W. Griffith - 1913, Biograph - EYE FLM24373 - OB 685502 - 720 x 404.ogv, ''The Adopted Brother'' by

Christy Cabanne William Christy Cabanne (April 16, 1888 – October 15, 1950) was an American film director, screenwriter, and silent film actor. Biography Born in 1888, Cabanne (pronounced CAB-a-nay) started his career on stage as an actor and director. He a ...

and

D.W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the na ...

. Silent film, 1913. Running time: 10:41 Charlie in Turkey Pat Sullivan Keen Cartoon Corporation 1916 685703 FLM11263.ogv, ''Charlie in Turkey'', silent

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

by Pat Sullivan, 1916. 9:39 Bits & Pieces - BP374 - Test flight of Pescara's helicopter - 1922 - EYE FLM7760 - OB105716.ogv, Flight tests with the helicopter Pescara 2R of

Raúl Pateras Pescara Raúl Pateras Pescara de Castelluccio (1890 – 1966), marquis of Pateras-Pescara, was an engineer, lawyer and inventor from Argentina who specialized in automobiles, helicopters and free-piston engines. Pescara is credited for being one of th ...

. Silent film 1922. 1:25. Les Vampires de la côte - Cândido de Faria - 1908 - EYE A03060 - neg0069.jpg, Poster by

Cândido de Faria Cândido Aragonez de Faria (artist's name Faria, 12 August 1849 in Laranjeiras, Sergipe (Brasil) – 17 December 1911 in Paris) was a Brazilian caricaturist, painter, lithographer and poster designer who emigrated to France in 1882. Faria design ...

for the silent Pathé Frères film ''Les Vampires de la côte'', 1908 Nieuw Weekblad voor de Cinematografie - 1 - 6 oktober 1922 - EYE.tif, Nieuw Weekblad voor de Cinematografie 1, 6 oktober 1922. Dutch weekly of cinematography. Lilian Harvey - Alexander Binder - EYE FOT136677.jpg, Filmstar Lilian Harvey by Alexander Binder, 1920s Truus van Aalten - Alexander Binder - EYE FOT168482.jpg, Filmstar Truus van Aalten by Alexander Binder, 1920s Greta Garbo - Alexander Binder - EYE FOT57148.jpg, Filmstar Greta Garbo by Alexander Binder, 1920s EYE Film Institute Netherlands - Nitrate film decay - 2.jpg, Film restoration

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eye Film Institute Netherlands 1952 establishments in the Netherlands Amsterdam-Noord Archives in the Netherlands Cinema museums Film archives in Europe Film organisations in the Netherlands Media museums in the Netherlands Museums established in 1952 Museums in Amsterdam Articles containing video clips FIAF-affiliated institutions