Cinematek

The Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique; Koninklijk Belgisch Filmarchief ) is a cinematheque located in the Centre for Fine Arts, in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as CINEMATEK (a homophone of cinémathèque).

History
The cinematheque was established in 1938 as a film archive by Henri Storck, André Thirifays, and Piet Vermeylen.

In 2002 the Film Museum founded by Jacques Ledoux, Constantin Brodzki and Corneille Hannoset was integrated into the archive to become a cinematheque.

In 2009 it became known as "CINEMATEK".

Collection
Its collection include works on film by Man Ray, Duchamp and Léger. As of 2018, the archive held 47,726 films and over a hundred-thousand film materials, with over eight thousand of the items originating from Belgium. The challenges associated with managing the collection were discussed in a 2001 article by Gabrielle Claes who served as director of the archive from 1988 until 2011.

CINEMATEK led the organization of the EXPRMNTL film festival which was run four times: 1949, 1958, 1963, 1967, and 1974. The festival is depicted in the 2016 film Exprmntl which was shown in 2019 at the London Short Film Festival.

Curators

 * Jacques Ledoux, 1948 to 1988
 * Gabrielle Claes, 1988 to 2011
 * Nicola Mazzanti, 2012 to 2020
 * Tomas Leyers 2020 to