Exhibitions and film programmes 2024 in Eye

Exhibition Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor – Cosmic Realism

20 January – 20 May 2024

Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor mix anthropology and art in works that operate at the intersection of film and the visual arts, developing countless new filmic processes around their ‘sensory ethnographica’. Examples of this include their most well-known work, Leviathan – a dizzying deep dive into humanity’s relationship to the sea – and Commensal, which was shown at Documenta 2017 in Kassel. Work by Paravel and Castaing-Taylor has previously been seen in the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMa NY and at the Venice Biennale.

NU:Reality

February – July 2024

Nu:Reality sets up a regular platform for virtual reality works in eight cinemas throughout the Netherlands. Three times a week, this project will present narrative VR of high artistic quality in Eye, including 360-degree films screening in Cinema 4, as well as two interactive VR works in the VR Space. The programme will rotate regularly, with new releases every two months.

Eye Meets Marmoucha

February, June and October 2024

Eye joins forces with Marmoucha, a platform for music and culture from North Africa and the Middle East, for three mini-festivals in Eye. Eye Meets Marmoucha brings together classics, recent films by new makers, theatrical family shows and performances by young poets with images from the Eye collection. The heart of this programme is formed by exceptional silent films with live musical accompaniment from the Marmoucha Orchestra, demonstrating that music is universal and has the power to bring people together.

Claire Denis

29 February – 20 March 2024

Claire Denis (1948) grew up in various countries in West Africa and is seen as one of the most important filmmakers in France, providing inspiration to a whole new generation of directors. Denis investigates the consequences of colonialism and the feeling of being an outsider, devoting particular attention to family tensions, sensuality, desire and the body. She worked as an assistant director for filmmakers such as Wim Wenders before going on to make her own films. She made short films, documentaries and features such as Chocolat (1988), Beau travail (1999), 35 Rhums (2008) and High Life (2018) with Robert Patterson.

The retrospective consists, among other works, of several new restorations including Chocolat, S’en fout la mort and Trouble Every Day. Beau travail (1999) will be released nationwide from 22 February 2024. The film was never released in the Netherlands before and is now distributed by Bantam Film.

And more

In a four-part series, taking place between 24 April and 29 May, experts and audiences will discuss films at the periphery of (and according to some, far beyond) the acceptable. Films that show our shifting ideas about anti-Semitism, sexuality & violence and the portrayal of people with disabilities. This series will be moderated by programme-maker Bahram Sadeghi. Then there is the annual Eye International Conference which takes place from 26 to 29 May, which will discuss current professional and academic issues around audiovisual heritage. This year’s theme: ‘Presenting Audiovisual Collections: Experiments and Explorations’.

Exhibition Albert Serra

7 June – 29 September 2024

Eye Filmmuseum presents the first exhibition in the Netherlands dedicated to Catalan film, video and theatre director Albert Serra. Specially for this exhibition, Serra is creating an immense installation that will fill the entire exhibition space. This new work is based on Liberté, a controversial play made by Serra for Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre. Liberté is set during the period leading up to the French Revolution, when a group of free-thinkers tried out various forms of sexual freedom outside of the conventions of the time.

Coen Brothers

12 July – 11 September 2024

This large summer programme includes all the films by Joel & Ethan Coen. Many of their unforgettable characters become lost in absurd situations that are played out with bone-dry humour. Their odes to film noir are full of visual flair, chicanery and deception. Even their eccentric satires crackle with fun. For the Coen brothers, big events and banality go hand in hand. Every one of their films is a brilliant cornucopia of inventiveness, love of film and actions that set off unpredictable chain reactions. They are able to effortlessly combine trivia and big gestures. With introductions by director Martin Koolhoven for Miller’s Crossing and film journalist Basje Boer for A Serious Man.

Presentations by Programmers of the Future

July 2024

Programmers of the Future is a programme in Eye that trains future programmers of film and the art of the moving image. The three participants are Aileen Ye, Farah Hasanbegovic and Samuel Leemeijer, who will be presenting their own film programme in Eye in the summer of 2024.

Exhibition New American Cinema – Experimental Film in the 1960s

11 October 2024 – 5 January 2025

Eye has a long tradition of showing and preserving important historical and modern avant-garde films. Continuing this tradition, Eye turns its spotlights on American avant-garde film of the ’60s. A period when artists breathed new life into the medium of film on a massive scale by using it as an art form in its own right and by exploring the boundaries between film and art. Featuring work by (16mm) art film trailblazers such as Bruce Connor, Marie Menken, Shirley Clarke, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Storm de Hirsch, Stan Vanderbeek and Andy Warhol.

The film programme in the cinemas will pay a great deal of attention to the relationship to other arts including performance, dance, Beat poetry, music á la Velvet Underground and films that have a mind-expanding effect.

Powell & Pressburger

September 2024

Between 1943 and 1951, legendary film duo Powell & Pressburger made a large number of hugely influential films, including classics such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). Michael Pressburger was more than willing to tear up the unwritten good taste rulebook and eschewed all forms of realism. He was seen as an inventive screenwriter with a love of ingenious narratives and strange plot twists. He founded production company The Archers with Emeric Pressburger. With their piling on of emotion and extravagant use of colour, Powell and Pressburger swam against the prevailing currents in British cinema.

Eye will release Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) nationwide, in a 4K restoration.

Satyajit Ray

December 2024

Indian maestro Satyajit Ray was a pioneer within Indian New Wave Cinema. An extremely visual filmmaker, he was passionately interested in what cinema is and can be. He pushed at the boundaries of cinematic techniques such as the close-up and the point-of-view shot. A social realist and humanist filmmaker, he was deeply fascinated by predicaments, perspective and the emancipation of women in particular.

His iconic debut, Pather Panchali, was followed by films such as The Music Room (1958) and Devi (1960). Satyajit Ray’s films gave a fresh view of India itself; a critical but constructive perspective, simultaneously realistic and poetic.

750 years of Amsterdam

From 27 October 2024

Marking 750 years of the city of Amsterdam, the monthly series Forever Young looks at Amsterdam as a hothouse for film talent, thanks in part to the training provided by institutions such as the Netherlands Film Academy, the Rietveld and Sandberg Institutes and the Rijksakademie art academy.