par Eric de Kuyper. Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique en collaboration avec la
Cinémathèque Française et la Cineteca del Comune di Bologna. Bruxelles
1995.

The high profile silent productions of the Twenties which we know so well offer little means of gaining access to the European cinema of the Tens, a coy and obstinate object. It requires a willing suspension of the feeling of oddness it provokes at first sight, a basic trust in its aesthetic and narrative procedures, and the perceptivity of accumulated experience. Concepts and vocabulary which would enhance the perception of the specific qualities of these films are still very scarce.

Eric de Kuyper, former deputy director of the Nederlands Filmmuseum and professor of cinema studies at Nijmegen University, has recently published an essay on Alfred Machin (1877-1929), a Belgian-born director whose filmography, according to the present state of research, lists 156 titles (145 until 1920 of which 24 are preserved and 11 after 1920 of which 8 are preserved - the numbers and preservation rates tell the tale). His Images and imaginary of Alfred Machin dispenses with academic appearences and presents itself, unassumingly, as a loose sequence of personal notes, fragmentary, musing, easily detracted by associations, and deviating to asides on Barthes and Pirandello. But its overall effect proves this to be a mise-en-scene with didactic and heuristic aims, the translation of an enormous knowledge and aesthetic sensitivity into tableaux vivants and sketches: a method as unorthodox as it is efficient. It lets us experience essential qualities of the cinema of the Tens, namely its aesthetic and emotional radiance. If the standard procedure of academic studies consists in transforming experience into knowledge and presenting the product, Eric de Kuyper has found a way to condense experience itself and so to open the royal path to these films. Basing his reflexions on a narrow choice of highly representative material, he proposes useful concepts and terms and a plethora of finds in a slim and beautiful text. Obviously, it never hurts to be a good writer, but in this case, the writer is excellent and the freedom he allows himself is to the profit of his object and of his readers.

Eric de Kuyper's essay is the centerpiece of a volume edited by the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique which also contains a short biography of Alfred Machin (by Marianne Thys), 20 scenarios of lost films (edited by Emmanuelle Toulet), a filmography (compiled by Sabine Lenk) and illustrations. The publication is bilingual, but the English translation does not always seem to convey the magic of the French original. (Mariann Lewinsky.)