The Henri Storck Collection

[McCrutchy]

The Belgian label Cinematek has begun to release a collection of films by Henri Storck (1907-1999) as dual format Blu-ray + DVD editions. The discs have Dutch and French audio and Dutch and English subtitles. Two more titles will complete the collection in late 2012.

The discs can purchased from Cinematek individually for 21 € or at a collection price of 60 € (72 € outside Belgium). See the links below.

I am unfamiliar with Storck's work, so I will post the synopses from Cinematek:



Images d'Ostende (Purchase):

Henri Storck (Ostend 1907 - Brussels 1999) lived through the whole history of cinema, passing from silent to sound, and from experimental to commercial films. He is recognised as a pioneer of Belgian cinema and a key figure in documentary. An eyewitness of his times, he made socially engaged films, but also poetic and experimental short films, films on art and a fiction feature. His body of work consists of 70 films, including a series of accounts, presented on this DVD, on his native city of Ostend of which he was the chronicler and which remained, for him, the Queen of beaches.

Misère au Borinage (Purchase):

Misère au Borinage, which he co-directed with Joris Ivens in 1933, has become a classic of the 'cinema of reality' with which he was most closely associated. In 1937 he made Les maisons de la misère, denouncing slum housing in the same pamphleteering style, and in 1938 Le patron est mort, an account of the funeral of Emile Vandervelde, leader of the Belgian Labour Party.