Desmet Collection goes Unesco & my book on Desmet online

Poster for Die Welt ohne Männer (Vitascope 1914), Desmet Collection.

The Eye Filminstituut Nederland (the former Netherlands Filmmuseum) has presented the well-known Desmet Collection for inclusion in the Unesco Memory of the World Register in 2011. The accompanying text to the Nomination goes: “The Desmet Collection consists mainly of an exceptional group of films, company documents, posters and film stills from the 1910s. The collection contains a large number of unique film prints including many masterpieces that were formerly presumed lost. It also exceeds the boundaries of film history and has great value for the socio-historical description and appreciation of one of the most important decades in modern history as it reflects cinematographic changes and many stories about the 1910s that still need to be unveiled.” As far as I know it would be a ‘ primeur’ if this film collection would be awarded by Unesco. It would surely set in motion the spreading of this wonderful film collection but also the accompaying posters, photos and business archive, which up till now can only be consulted ‘in situ’. The Desmet Collection competes with serious competitors like the classic Irish Book of Kells, the Karen Blixen Archive, the Dutch East Indies archive, the manuscript of Multatuli’s Max Havelaar, the film collection of the Jugoslavenska Kinoteka, Tolstoi’s archive, the archive of composer Katchaturian etc.

Speaking about availability: my own book Jean Desmet and the Early Dutch Film Trade (Amsterdam University Press 2003) is now available online through a portal of the University of Amsterdam. The same portal already held my Dutch-written dissertation.

~ by Ivo Blom on December 3, 2010.