The Desmet Collection

On May 25, 2011, UNESCO officially announced that the Desmet Collection had been selected as a cultural heritage for the Memory of the World Register. It was the first time that a film collection had earned this distinction.

The Register is a World Heritage list for 'documentary heritage', and includes books, archives, audiovisual recordings, and reports of exceptional historical significance.

A young Jean Desmet poses next to a barrel organ, circa 1896.

Scope and content

The Desmet Collection consists of more than 900 films, about and 2,000 posters, photographs, programs, leaflets, and brochures, as well as the archive of the business run by theatre owner and film distributor Jean Desmet. Its main focus is on the period 1907-1916, when Desmet worked as a travelling cinema operator and later as a cinema owner and distributor. But the archive also contains material from the years after 1916, (when Desmet was mainly active in real estate), as well as documents about his private life. In the Desmet file, you can read more about Desmet and see items from his collection.

Preservation and digitization

In 1957, a year after Desmet’s death, the collection came into the possession of the former Dutch Film Museum. In 2011, the company archive and the publicity materials were digitized as part of the Metamorfoze project, which is a national digitization project for the conservation of paper-based heritage items.

The films, photographs, and posters have already been preserved and digitized, for example as part of the Beelden voor de Toekomst initiative. Many of the posters were restored and digitized from 1997-2000 as part of the large-scale Deltaplan voor cultuurbehoud, under the supervision of the Mondriaan Foundation.

Unique collection

The fact that collection has been included in the Memory of the World Register indicates its unique value. The collection is unrivalled in the world, due to its breadth and the fact that it contains the entire company archive. It provides unique insights into the film-screening and distribution practices of the 1910s. The film industry was undergoing major changes in that period, due to the emergence of permanent cinemas as places where films were shown, the introduction of film distribution, and the emergence of the long (feature) film.

Research

Within a few years, film had grown from a relatively minor fairground attraction into the leading entertainment medium, with an audience of millions every year. On the basis of the sources in the collection, for example the cash ledgers, lease documents, purchase lists, invoices, and correspondence, we can gain a good understanding of the ins and outs of Desmet's film company.

For film historians as well, the collection is an almost inexhaustible source of research. Research into the collection has helped ensure that people’s image of the film world in the 1910s, especially before the First World War, has been thoroughly revised.

In 2000, film historian Ivo Blom received his PhD for research into the Desmet Collection, with the thesis ‘Pionierswerk: Jean Desmet en de vroege Nederlandse filmhandel en bioscoopexploitatie (1907-1916)’. In 2003, the English-language trade edition of this dissertation was published as ‘Jean Desmet and Early Dutch Film Trade’.

Postcard showing the Rembrandt cinema in Utrecht, circa 1924.

The Cinema Boom

‘Cinema theatres are popping up all over the place’ was a commonly heard phrase in the early 1910s.

Picture postcard of an advertisement for Jean Desmet's Rotterdam cinema Parisien, circa 1912.

The Rise of Distribution

The emergence of a distributor acting as an intermediary between producer and exhibitor was a fundamental change in Dutch film screening practices.

Promotional text for a film distributed by Jean Desmet.

Jean Desmet and the Development of Film Distribution in Netherlands

Initially, Jean Desmet made his money as a fairground and travelling cinema operator, but this changed in 1909. He became one of the Netherlands' first film distributors.