A young film historian in Knokke

In 1963, a young P. Adams Sitney and his friend Jonas Mekas travelled to Knokke to attend the third edition of EXPRMNTL. What the future film historian could not have imagined was that this edition would be marred by accusations of censorship levelled at the government, which was alleged to have prevented the screening of certain films. In any case, Sitney was extremely well received by Jacques Ledoux, and the two formed a friendship based on their mutual love of cinema. From then on, whenever he visited Belgium, Sitney was invited by the curator of the Cinematek to watch rare film prints, of which he was very proud. Sitney described Ledoux as an eccentric figure who was fascinated by the idea of possessing works in his collection that no other archive held. In an interview with the writer Anne Head, the film historian explained that Ledoux was keen to archive experimental films by lesser-known artists, and that he used EXPRMNTL to encourage them to continue producing work. Furthermore, he described the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique curator as one of the first to take experimental cinema seriously. The full interview can be accessed below.