“From Screen to Life”: Film Audiences in Catholic Flanders, a Cinephile Approach

This article explores the overlooked role of Catholic film initiatives in shaping film audiences in Flanders, Belgium. Considering the pillarized organization of Belgian exhibition practices, the emphasis lies on the integration of film culture in Catholic schools as well as in their social movements. Cinephilia is foregrounded as an important phenomenon for ongoing research in film audiences, and therefore the arguments draw on an interview with Eric de Kuyper (born 1942) and Emile Poppe (born 1947), combined with the film critical work of Jos Burvenich (1914-2002) and Dirk Lauwaert (1944-2013), alongside various audience perspectives from popular press, like school bulletins, online blogs and TV shows. These testimonies indicate the specificities of urban and rural film culture in Catholic milieus, emphasizing their shared core as invested in critical film literacy. Finally, these various cinephile accounts on Catholic film initiatives present an episodic overview of shifting tendencies, from a strong American influence in the immediate post-war era to an emphasis on the youth and film literacy in the fifties, and an explicitly social orientation from the sixties onwards.