In the 1960s, as in the rest of Europe, there was a wave of higher creativity in Belgian cinema, coinciding with greater attention from the institutions. This period is part of the primary activity carried out by Jacques Ledoux: director of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, one of the richest film libraries in the world, he pursued a broader cultural and cinematographic education policy, helping to enhance national production and establishing the Knokke-le-Zoute International Film Festival, whose editions took place from 1958 to 1974. According to itypejob, the creation of state structures for the development of cinema within the ministry of culture, and of film schools were also encouraged such as the IAD (Institut des Arts de Diffusion, founded in Louvain-La Neuve in 1959) and the INSAS (Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des techniques de diffusion, in Brussels since its foundation in 1962); the latter also houses the Center international de liaison des écoles de cinéma et de télévision (CILECT), founded in Cannes in 1955, to which 108 institutions from fifty countries around the world joined in 2000. This innovative process was accompanied by the emergence of new directors. Paul Meyer made Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre (1960; Already fly the lean flower), a feature film halfway between fiction and documentary that portrays the living conditions of immigrant miners in Flénu. The film, commissioned as a short film by the ministry of education, became something different from the initial project in the course of construction; withdrawn from the government in 1963, an act that also decreed the end of the director’s career, it was again released in theaters only in the nineties. Meanwhile, in 1965, the first state-funded film was released, De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen or L’homme au crâne rasé, which attracted international attention André Delvaux, destined to become the greatest Belgian author of the second post-war period. filmmakers promoters of a political cinema (Robbe De Hert, Paul De Vree, Guido Henderickx, Patrick Le Bon, Chris Verbiest) gathered, between the mid-sixties and the end of the seventies, around the Fugitive cinéma group based in Antwerp, thus giving rise to a predominantly collective production of denouncement films. At the same time, experimental cinema manifested an underground character in Roland Lethem’s extreme films (La fée sanguinaire, 1968; Le sexe enragé de la fée sanguinaire, 1979) and in the films of Patrick Hella and Jos Pustjens, and the Gothic style developed in fantastic and surrealist tradition, for example. in the films of Harry Kümel (Le rouge aux lèvres, 1971, The vestal of Satan; Malpertuis, also known as Malpertuis, histoire d’une maison maudite, 1972).
In the new cinema, since the 1970s, directors such as Chantal Akerman (since the film Je, tu, il, elle, in 1974), Jean-Jacques Andrien (Le fils d’Amr est mort, 1975; Le grand paysage d’Alexis Droeven, 1981; Mémoires, 1984; Australia, 1989), Benoît Lamy (Jambon d’Ardenne, 1977; Combat de fauves, 1998), Thierry Zeno (Vase de noces, 1974; Des morts, 1981), who favored autobiography, memory, landscape (Dubois 2000). In the following decades Dominique Deruddere (L’amour est un chien de l’enfer, 1987; Aspetta primavera, Bandini, 1989; Iedereen beroemd !, 2000, Absolutely famous), Mary Jimenez (Du verbe aimer, 1984) reached a certain notoriety., Marion Hänsel (Dust, 1985; The master, 1989; The quarry, 1998). But to urge the attention of international critics were mainly films from the nineties, such as Toto le héros (1991; Toto le héros – A hero of the end of the millennium) by Jaco van Dormael, C’est arrivé près de chez vous (1992; The cameraman and the murderer) by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, Ma vie en rose (1997; My life in pink) by Alain Berliner and even more the works of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (such as Rosetta, 1999, Palme d’Or a Cannes). Contemporary Belgian cinema, where the more traditional strands of short films, animated films and documentaries have continued to develop, is not represented by a real film school, but still owes its recognisability and consistency to individual personalities. * Toto le héros – A hero of the end of the millennium) by Jaco van Dormael, C’est arrivé près de chez vous (1992; The cameraman and the murderer) by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, Ma vie en rose (1997; My life in pink) by Alain Berliner and even more the works of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (such as Rosetta, 1999, Palme d’Or at Cannes). Contemporary Belgian cinema, where the more traditional strands of short films, animated films and documentaries have continued to develop, is not represented by a real film school, but still owes its recognisability and consistency to individual personalities. * Toto le héros – A hero of the end of the millennium) by Jaco van Dormael, C’est arrivé près de chez vous (1992; The cameraman and the murderer) by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, Ma vie en rose (1997; My life in pink) by Alain Berliner and even more the works of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (such as Rosetta, 1999, Palme d’Or at Cannes). Contemporary Belgian cinema, where the more traditional strands of short films, animated films and documentaries have continued to develop, is not represented by a real film school, but still owes its recognisability and consistency to individual personalities. * My life in pink) by Alain Berliner and even more the works of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (such as Rosetta, 1999, Palme d’Or at Cannes). Contemporary Belgian cinema, where the more traditional strands of short films, animated films and documentaries have continued to develop, is not represented by a real film school, but still owes its recognisability and consistency to individual personalities. * My life in pink) by Alain Berliner and even more the works of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (such as Rosetta, 1999, Palme d’Or at Cannes). Contemporary Belgian cinema, where the more traditional strands of short films, animated films and documentaries have continued to develop, is not represented by a real film school, but still owes its recognisability and consistency to individual personalities.
