The presentation is open every day from 10:00 to 19:00 and can be visited with either a film or exhibition ticket. Admission is free for children aged 17 and under.
What did cinema equipment and film strips used to look like, and what technological developments has film undergone? The permanent presentation in our Panorama on the ground floor gives you an answer. And spread throughout the building, various objects highlight the world of the moving image.
On the ground floor of Eye, the Panorama, you can see a permanent presentation featuring film devices that mark important moments in the history of cinema. The Panorama is suitable for all ages.
In the Panorama, we present a few highlights from the collection, including a Mitchell, which is a 35mm camera that was used to shoot many major Hollywood films, a mutoscope that shows Charlie Chaplin’s The Waiter, a magic lantern, and the Kinamo, a very compact camera that film pioneer Joris Ivens used to film the famous documentary De Brug (The Bridge). Together they show the quest of enthusiastic inventors and visionaries to capture the moving image.
For young and old, the exhibition provides accessible answers to questions such as: how were films made in the old days, what did the older cinema equipment look like, and what technological developments has film undergone?
Step into the Film Catcher, surround yourself with 1000 films and take control. Take a quiz or watch a movie in the Pods (mini cinemas!), create a flipbook in the Flipbook Machine and star in a film scene in the Green Screen.
Film Catcher opens your eyes to how beautiful and diverse film can be. Conjure up ever-changing collections of images using filter searches such as ‘red’, ‘dancing’, ‘city’ or ‘close-up’. Be surprised by an ever-expanding number of clips taken from the 54,000 films in the Eye collection. Has a clip caught your eye? Then capture it on your tablet and find out more.
Free admission with a film or exhibition ticket.
Eye Filmmuseum offers guided tours in Dutch Sign Language (NGT) through the permanent presentation. Visitors can also watch videos in NGT on their smartphone by scanning QR codes at the various parts of the presentation, such as the zoetrope, the magic lantern, the Mitchell camera and the green screen. More information can be found here.
The Eye walk is a video tour for children aged 7 to 12 that brings exciting films to life.
Film has no single inventor. Independently of each other, countless scientists, pioneers, and entrepreneurs paved the road that led to the camera and projector, which remain two fundamental pieces of film equipment.
Throughout the Eye building, you will find several of their illustrious predecessors. By shooting and watching, you will discover for yourself the techniques and optical tricks that allow movie magic to work. The devices have exotic names such as the phenakistoscope, the praxinoscope, and the thaumatrope. They show magical images of a galloping horse, a girl jumping rope, and a cat wearing boots.
Children can each get their own Eye Explore More puzzle tour booklet, and go off on a research project through the building. Your two eyes see everything, but your mind often plays tricks on you. How? This is what you'll find out while solving the puzzles in the tour. You play with the viewers and discover how motion works in films and in optical illusions. And of course, you also use your own imagination!
Halfway up the staircase of the Arena, you can sit down on one of the listening benches. Put on the headphones, and dive into the world of some famous film classics.
In scenes of five minutes each, 3D sound is used to tell a vivid story about the creation of four films. You will experience the perspective of the cameraman (Jaws), the scriptwriter (Chinatown), the editor (Run Lola Run) and the composer (Once Upon a Time in the West). After listening, you will better understand how the famous scenes from these films were created.
The Eye collection contains 95,000 photographs that were taken on film sets.
On seven monitors at the top of the Arena staircase, you can see alternating series of set photos from films such as Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), and More Sweetly Play the Dance (William Kentridge, 2015). Watch dozens of famous directors at work, along with their cast and crew.
Eye possesses a special collection of over 52,000 unique film posters. Among them are posters from the early days of film to the latest blockbusters and arthouse films. Together, they offer an overview not only of film history but also of developments in graphic design. On view in Eye is a changing selection that reflects the regular programming.
