Welcome back to the program! Paris was wonderful and now it's time to get the class going in full swing! Today we took a walking tour around Brussels with an actual guide this time and it's great to get a little insight into the history of the city and the country of Belgium as it fits into the historic schema of Europe.
In addition to the walking tour, we've gotten a tour of the National Cinamtek of Brussels, which is an institution dedicated to all things film related. They offer a multitude of events ranging from dedicated film festival events, cinema and film based exhibition and screenings of films that run the gamut of silent film, documentary, experiment, and everything in-between.
On this particular occasion, we were offered the opportunity to see the home movies of the acclaimed Surrealist painter Rene Magritte, who just happens to hail from Belgium. Filling the exhibition spaces were a range of exhibits that offer insight into the birth of the motion picture and glimpse of the technology used to arrive at the contemporary age of digital cinema. The director of the institution was kind enough to provide us with a short lecture and then question & answer session that covered a broad range of topics, including the birth of the Cinematek, the movie industry through the ages, the works of Belgian poet, artist, and experimental filmmaker Marcel Broodthaers, and an intense discussion on the worldwide industry conversion to digital technology and what that means to the process of archiving for future ages. All interesting stuff and a pleasure to meet them all and enjoy some rarely seen footage of one of the twentieth centuries finest Surrealists, Rene Magritte.
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