Hippolyte De Kempeneer(1876-1944)
- Director
- Producer
Before 1920, Hippolyte De Kempeneer was one of the most active of
national pioneers (alongside Frenchman Alfed Machin in the fictional
sphere). Born in Anderlecht, near Brussels, De Kempeneer had for many
years been a wine merchant, then a dealer in beers , before making his
first reportage in 1897 (King Leopold II at the Tervuren Exhibition).
An astute businessman, he quickly realized the potential of such
typically Belgian news items and, with the help of three other
cameramen (including Auguste Meuter) shooting in the Hainaut province
and around Liège and Brussels, De Kempeneer launched the newreel 'La
semaine animée', screened each Friday between 1912 and 1914. He became
more profuse, in 1913 founding the 'Ligue du Cinéma Moral', the year
after opening the 'Cinéma des Familles', a small theatre reserved for
documentaries with school matinees. During the war there came the
'Compagnie Belge des Films Instructifs' (Belgian Instructional Film
Company) created "in the service of youth". In the cellars of his
cinema he put together a lab with facilities for developing, printing
and titling films. Of course, it is impossible to track down all the
material shot by or for De Kempeneer, and the majority of these pieces
have since been lost. Tirelessly cranking away in the 1910s, he shot
dozens od mini-documentaries on events as they happened, recording
Brussels life, a cattle exhibition, farm labour, state funerals; then
during the war, the provision of supplies and holiday camp scenes. The
year 1919 would also see de Kempeneer move into patriotic fiction, when
he produced Charles Tutelier's 'The Martyrdom of Belgium'. It was also
De Kempeneer who set up the country's first large studio complex in
Machelen where Belgian, French, Dutch even Australian directors shot.
After the closure of his production company Belga Films in 1926, he
retained his laboratory with facilities for developing, printing and
subtitling until World War II, when it was sequestrated by the Germans.
Producer of the first patriotic features in 1919, he decided once again
- this time in secret- to make a film celebrating the glory of the