Eye Film Institute Netherlands

EYE Film Institute Netherlands

Conceived as a free-standing sculpture on an eye-catching site, the planned Filmmuseum in Amsterdam has yet to find its equal in kind and dimensions anywhere in the world.
It positions itself vis-à-vis the old part of the city and the Central Station on the shoreline of the IJ River. The Filmmuseum is designed as a dynamic entity. Even from afar, the appearanceof its crystalline geometry changes perpetually in the shifting play of light.
To approach the Filmmuseum from the city center is to experience a “dramaturgy” of differing spatial and visual sequences. Architecturally, the Filmmuseum addresses the parameters of motion and light that are especially thematically relevant to the medium of film.
These become elements that endow the building witha unique identity while enhancing the perception and experience of it on this unique site.
At the end of 2011, EYE will occupy its new premises on the north bank of the river IJ, across the water from Amsterdam Central Station. Vienna-based company Delugan Meissl Associated Architects is responsible for the remarkable design. The new building houses four state-of-the-art auditoriums with acapacity of 300, 120 (2x) and 80 respectively. There is ample space for exhibitions and educational activities. Offices, a museum shop and a café-restaurant with sunny waterfront terrace complete the picture.

The Filmmuseum was founded in 1946 and is the only museum of cinematography in the Netherlands. It houses an internationally renowned collection of more than thirty thousand film titles, andhas, in its sixty year existence, built up a reputation for attractive and daring programming.

The Filmmuseum is praised for its remarkable restorations of silent movies and film classics: Dutch films such as Dakota (1974) by Wim Verstappen and Henk Kleinman’s Zeemansvrouwen (1930). But many other films, too, such as Beyond the Rocks (1922, with Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson) and M- eineStadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) by Fritz Lang acquired a second life thanks to the restorations by the Filmmuseum. In the spring of this year, Le mystère de la Tour Eiffel (Julien Duvivier, 1928) in the version restored by the Filmmuseum was selected for the ‘Cannes Classics’ event in the Cannes film festival. The efforts of the Filmmuseum do not leave the great names of the silver screen unmoved,as was illustrated by the spontaneous reaction of the actress Isabella Rossellini with regard to our Tati conservations when she exclaimed: ‘You do do the best restorations!’
 
Growing interest
Every year the Filmmuseum presents a number of major programmes, in which the history of film and new development are highlighted. In addition the museum organises open air screenings, festivals andretrospectives of famous and less famous film celebrities. Since it was started in 2002, the Filmmuseum Biennale, a two-yearly festival around the collection of silent movies, attracts growing, also international, attention. The Guardian and The New York Times covered the event. The museum also acts as a distributor of classics and unusual contemporary films. It manages the largest film library inthe Netherlands and possesses a large collection of magazines, posters, photos, scenarios and publicity material.

With all these activities the Filmmuseum serves a varied and growing group of film buffs and professionals. Over the last five years the number of visitors increased from 70,000 to 175,000, which makes the Filmmuseum one of the five most frequently visited museums of Amsterdam (2005).Too tight a fit
The present accommodation of the Filmmuseum is insufficient for the task of showing the collection in a broad and varied way. The Vondel Park pavilion can no longer do justice to the sheer size and the importance of the collections and the expertise the museum has amassed over the past sixty years.
The Filmmuseum has therefore been looking for a new location and found a new...