Split Screen: Belgian Cinema and Cultural IdentityIn presenting the first English language study of Belgian cinema, Split Screen explores the fascinating history of a cinema largely determined by linguistic division and beset by problems of cultural identity. This "split screen" characterizes the Belgian cinema, which has not received the critical praise that it deserves, despite the recent international successes of films like Toto the Hero, and the achievements of individual directors such as Henri Storck, André Delvaux, and Chantal Akerman. In surveying the evolution of Belgian cinema from its beginnings to the present day, Philip Mosley locates all the major feature films, describes the crucial intervention of the state in film production, and reveals undervalued Belgian traditions in documentary, in animation, in short films, and in a colonial cinema created partly by missionaries in the former Belgian Congo. Due to the political and economic transformations affecting Europe, the reforms of the Belgian state, and the increasing globalization of world media industries, Belgian cinema can now inscribe itself within new national and international contexts. |
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actors American André André Delvaux Antwerp artistic audience audiovisual auteurist Belfilm Belge Belgian animation Belgian cinema Belgian feature Belgian film Belgian filmmakers Belgium Belvision bicultural box-office broadcasting Brussels colonial cinema comic commercial Congo coproduction Courtesy critical cultural identity Dekeukeleire Delvaux directors documentary dominant Dutch early economic Encyclopédie especially established ethnolinguistic Europe European experimental feature production festival fiction FIGURE film industry film production filmmakers Flanders Flemish cinema Flemish Community foreign France francophone French Community gian Henri Storck Hert Hollywood images instance interest Jungblut language Leboutte Liège linguistic communities Marion Hänsel Meyst million franks Ministry Misère au Borinage national cinema nonetheless notably novel official Païni Pathé Paul Delvaux period political popular postwar projects regional Royal Film Archive RTBF Schoukens sector shot Storck studio style subsidy success television theaters tion Toto le héros Vanderheyden Wallonia Walloon