The European Film Academy (EFA) has set up a European film heritage department as part of a move to broaden its scope of activities beyond organising the European Film Awards.
Run by EFA’s former head of press Pascal Edelmann, the aim of the heritage department is to celebrate the diverse and rich film heritage of Europe.
The department has begun building up a pan-European film heritage network, asking cinematheques, film archives and institutions to share information on anniversaries of filmmakers, films, institutions, or specific themes relevant to cinema history in the various European countries and regions.
EFA says it wants to connect the various initiatives and make them more widely known among lovers of European cinema.
One of the department’s first moves has been to add another 22 places to EFA’s Treasures Of European Film Culture list, increasing the total number to 35.
The Treasures is the Academy’s list of places of a symbolic nature for European cinema that it argues need to be maintained and protected.
They include London’s Freemason’s Hall, which has appeared in films such as Spectre, Sherlock Holmes and The Death Of Stalin, and The Notting Hill Bookshop, which featured in Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill.
Other locations selected include Rome’s Trevi Fountain (La Dolce Vita), Quilter Street in Bethnal Green, London (Secrets and Lies), Scotland’s Lochailort Church (Breaking The Waves), Warsaw’s Inflancka Housing Complex (Dekalogue), Madrid’s Circulo de Bellas Artes (Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother) and Paris’ Café des Deux Moulins (Amelie).
Matthijs Wouter Knol, director of the European Film Academy, said: “Instead of limiting our work to organising the European Film Awards, the European Film Academy will embrace European film history and the people who have made European film what it is today. This will result in new projects with exciting partners, but also become visible in all programming we will do throughout the year: in our work for young audiences, in our awards ceremonies, and in new services we will start offering for our members.”
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