Exhibitions
In our large exhibition space, you can visit the temporary exhibition, where leading artists explore the intersection of visual art and cinema. On the ground floor and spread throughout the building, you can visit the permanent exhibition, What is Film?. Through collection items and installations, you will become acquainted with the development of film, from the past to the present.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011) (courtesy of Dirimart)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011) (courtesy of Dirimart)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Inner Landscapes
From 18 January through 1 June 2025, Eye Filmmuseum presents the first Dutch exhibition devoted to the work of acclaimed Turkish filmmaker and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan. For this occasion, the museum is bringing together his prize-winning films and lesser-known landscape photographs for the very first time.

Permanent exhibition What is Film?
Various moving image components are highlighted on the ground floor and throughout the building. Browse through Eye's unique collection or make your own flip book or animated film.
Previously in Eye
Past exhibitions

Bridges-Go-Round (Shirley Clarke, US 1958) (Courtesy of Milestone Films and the Shirley Clarke Estate)
Underground – American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s
Eye highlights the American avant-garde cinema in the 1960s. The exhibition, along with an extensive film programme, features screenings of both iconic and lesser-known works.
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still Liberté (Albert Serra, FR/DE/PT/ES 2019)
Albert Serra – Liberté
Eye Filmmuseum presents Albert Serra – Liberté. For this exhibition, Serra has turned the entire gallery into an immersive set, filled with nocturnal and clandestine encounters.
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Paravel & Castaing-Taylor – Cosmic Realism
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are continuously looking to create a fresh new film language that goes beyond traditional human-centred perspectives in anthropology.
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Janis Rafa – Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me.
The exhibition by Greek artist and filmmaker Janis Rafa showcases evocative films and video installations that revolve around the relation between humans, animals and landscapes.
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Werner Herzog – The Ecstatic Truth
Werner Herzog has fascinated audiences for more than fifty years. In his search for the 'ecstatic truth', Herzog stylises images to reveal a deeper level of truth.
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Saodat Ismailova – 18 000 Worlds
In her first retrospective exhibition 18,000 Worlds, Saodat Ismailova guides us into the hidden world of myth and ritual in Central Asia.
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Fiona Tan – Mountains and Molehills
How do we hold on to memories – in archives, in the mind, in the landscape, on film? Visual artist and filmmaker Fiona Tan investigates ways in which we record the world around us.
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Meriem Bennani, Kahlil Joseph, Karrabing Film Collective
The work of the three recent winners of the Eye Art & Film Prize, who effortlessly cross the boundaries between cinema, documentary, and visual arts.
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Guido van der Werve – Palpable Futility
The first retrospective exhibition of work by Guido van der Werve. In his universe, romanticism, nature and the sublime are never far away.
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All About Film About Theatre – Ivo van Hove & Jan Versweyveld
Film-to-stage adaptations synthesize theatre with film, live video, and music.
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Vive le cinéma! Art & Film
Exhibition with spatial film art by five important directors
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Waiting for the Time to Pass
To celebrate Eye's 75th anniversary, we asked seven artists we have worked with o exhibitions in the past to provide a film work for a digital exhibition.
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Trembling Landscapes
Eye Filmmuseum presents a group exhibition that explores landscape with some of the Arab world’s most prominent artists who work with film and video.
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Chantal Akerman – Passages
Major solo exhibition of work by Chantal Akerman, who rose to fame in the 1970s as a feminist avant-garde filmmaker, who later discovered the possibilities of the art gallery.
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Francis Alÿs – Children's Games
A major exhibition of work by the Belgian-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs, who is best-known for his playful videos that are both engaged and poetic.
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William Kentridge – Ten Drawings for Projection
In 2015, William Kentridge donated 10 Drawings for Projection to Eye Filmmuseum. Illuminating the eventful history of South Africa, these films are part of a larger installation.
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Andrei Tarkovsky – The Exhibition
Exhibition and film programme devoted to the celebrated filmmaker and mystic, focusing specifically on Tarkovsky’s quest for existential truth.
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A Tale of Hidden Histories
Truth, facts, memories, reality: are they all constructions? The artists in this group exhibition deploy many different types of media to investigate and ‘unmask’ the past.
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Jan Svankmajer – The Alchemical Wedding
Steaks, pebbles, iron locks: master animator Jan Švankmajer can bring anything to life in works of obsession, horror and eroticism underpinned by an undercurrent of abuse of power.
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Ryoji Ikeda
Visual artist and a key figure in the world of electronic music Ikeda created a spectacular presentation of his overwhelmingly immersive audiovisual artworks specially for Eye.
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Alex van Warmerdam – L'histoire kaputt
At the invitation of Eye Filmmuseum, Alex van Warmerdam presents an exhibition with new films, installations and objects. Film, theatre, design and painting come together.
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Hito Steyerl, Ben Rivers, Wang Bing – Eye Art & Film Prize
Highlighting this Eye Art & Film Prize, this exhibition featured work by the first three winners, all of whom share a socially engaged approach to their art.
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Jesper Just
Solo exhibition by Jesper Just, who caused a stir with cinematographic works in which he explores gender, desires, relations and identity in a refined visual idiom.
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Locus: Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Cao Guimarães
Exhibition of work by prominent film artists Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Cao Guimarães. Their celebrated work evokes a world that blends dream, sensory experience and reality.
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Martin Scorsese – The Exhibition
Exhibition devoted to one of the most important American film directors of the past half-century: Martin Scorsese.
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Béla Tarr – Till the End of the World
Béla Tarr is a master of the magnificent long take, a master of wonderfully shot, melancholic films that express the human condition.
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Celluloid – Tacita Dean, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Rosa Barba, Gibson & Recoder
International group exhibition featuring work by artists who use and reflect on the qualities of 16mm and 35mm film stock and the cinematic apparatus.
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Master of Light – Robby Müller
Major exhibition devoted to the Netherlands’ most famous director of photography, Robby Müller.
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Close-Up – A New Generation of Film and Video Artists in the Netherlands
Group exhibition featuring work by a new generation of filmmakers and artists in the Netherlands, who are breaking down the barriers between film, video and visual art.
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Michelangelo Antonioni – Il maestro del cinema moderno
Exhibition about one of the foremost innovators in film from the last century, who renewed the grammar of film by thinking in terms of the image and less in terms of narrative.
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William Kentridge – If We Ever Get to Heaven
Exhibition featuring work by the celebrated South African artist William Kentridge, who achieved renown with his remarkable animation films, charcoal drawings and installations.
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Jean Desmet’s Dream Factory
With the exhibition Jean Desmet’s Dream Factory, Eye opened up one of its treasure troves, inviting you to step into the dream world of the early years of cinema.
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Anthony McCall – Solid Light Films and Other Works
Since the 1970s, McCall has produced a remarkable body of work that includes, among other media, large-scale light-projection installations, so-called ‘solid light films’.
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David Cronenberg – The Exhibition
Major exhibition focusing on director David Cronenberg, who acquired cult status with his idiosyncratic films about the relationship between body, mind, technology and mass media.
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Cinema Remake – Art & Film
Exhibition with work of filmmakers and artists who use iconic feature films as a basis with which to create something radically new.
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The Quay Brothers' Universum
Exhibition featuring the enigmatic and dark body of work of the Quay Brothers that includes stop-motion animation, drawings, and performing arts productions.
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Péter Forgács – Looming Fire
Based on Eye’s extensive collection of home movies, Forgács takes us through everyday life in the Netherlands East Indies at the height of the colonial period.
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Fellini – The Exhibition
Focusing on one of the most image-defining masters of post-war Italian cinema, Fellini – The Exhibition unravels the filmmaker’s universe.
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Johan van der Keuken – Up to the Light
The exhibition focused on the extraordinary way in which Van der Keuken brought together contrasting images in his films and observed a world in constant transition.
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Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) – Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction
Exhibition on the German-American avant-garde filmmaker who was highly influential in the development of the animation film and who remains a source of inspiration for animators.
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Expanded Cinema – Isaac Julien, Fiona Tan, Yang Fudong
With their works in this exhibition, the participating artists demonstrated that film doesn’t just belong in the cinema.
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Stanley Kubrick – The Exhibition
Comprehensive exhibition on one of the most influential directors of the 20th century, the genius behind films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.
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Found Footage – Cinema Exposed
The exhibition showed how artists and filmmakers make use of the nearly inexhaustible reservoir of images that can be found in film archives, on the Internet, TV and DVD.
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Eye Art & Film Prize
Every year since 2015, Eye has awarded the Eye Art & Film Prize to an artist who operates on the interface between visual art and film. This annual prize is intended towards the creation of new work that is also shown in Eye.