Il Cinema Repubblica - the birth of a new festival...

With a company named Republic of Reinvention, we figured we needed a national holiday, so every year on July 20, we throw a party in our garden, amidst the Gentse Feesten. But this year, we wanted something extra...

We already explained where the idea materialized, but in all honesty, when you sleep with a bunch of dogs, it's easy to get their fleas, eventually. We've been working with silent movies for several years now and we're still amazed by the magic moment a good pianist and a 16mm projector can create. It's like classical music: not a lot of people consume it anymore, but you can put anyone in front of a good orchestra and know they'll be blown away immediately. Actually, this was the one central idea that got us brainstorming in the first place for Cinema Repubblica: "Let's make silent movies hip again!".

And so we started experimenting by programming a little festival in our underground medieval dungeon.

After quite some discussion, we ended up with this programme, aimed at silent movie first-timers and composed by Bruno Mestdagh, main archivist at Cinematek.

As this was still an experiment, we only invited friends and family, but keep an eye on next year's July 20, cause this edition was too successful not to scale it up!

Update

In the mean time, Il Cinema Repubblica is happening!

Click here to check out the 2019 edition.

Click here to check out the 2018 edition.