The sheer scale and diversity of the Eye collection is made clear once a year when the collection specialists give a glimpse of this during the day-long Meet the Archive symposium. But just one day a year is not nearly enough to do justice to the richness of the collections housed by the filmmuseum.
Eye’s collection encompasses no less than 55,000 film titles. Dozens of archives from directors and film specialists are stored and made available, and the museum has made an internationally groundbreaking contribution in the fields of colour restoration, film conservation and archival research ever since the 1980s.
Ongoing
Meet the Archive
Hidden treasures from Eye's collection
Meet the Archive gives you a behind-the-scenes look into Eye. It’s a hive of activity: the museum collects, researches, restores and reflects on film history – ‘hidden’ activities our curators are happy to reveal to you, once a month, always on a Friday.
Eye curators talk about the filmmuseum’s eclectic, wide-ranging collection. What is hidden among a collection of 55,000 film titles? Which films are restored and why? In what areas does Eye carry out research? And what choices does putting together a collection like this involve?
still from The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902)
still from The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902)
Eye is also responsible for a number of exceptional sub-collections, such as the films of the Nederlandse Filmliga, the Jean Desmet collection (world heritage) and the very earliest newsreels from the Biograph & Mutoscope Company.
And there’s more. Eye likes to initiate research projects focused on special themes such as film censorship, forgotten work by early female filmmakers and the re-use of material from the collection in new (digital) artworks.
Eye's curators are more than happy to tell you all about everything that’s not immediately visible to the visitor, illustrated by seldom-screened film clips and whole films.
Meet the Archive
still from The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902): De boulevard van Scheveningen
Eye Film Player
With the Eye Film Player, we offer highlights from Eye's collection and unique films that you won't see anywhere else online.
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