Isidore Moray
- Director
Like many pioneers of cinema in general, and of Belgian cinema in
particular, the name of Isidore Moray is completely forgotten today.
And yet a tribute should be paid to this former projectionist, who
created the first independent Belgian Newsreel company (Journal belge
d'actualités), who made the first fiction films in his country:
Zonneslag & Cie (1912),
Une victime du petit coureur (1913)
and mainly
La famille Van Petegem à la mer (1912),
all featuring famous actors of the time such as
Gustave Libeau,
Esther Deltenre or
Fernand Crommelynck. The latter film
is even more remarkable in that it is probably the first Belgian film
in Kinemacolor, a two-color process invented in Great Britain by
George Albert Smith and
Charles Urban. During the First World War Moray was appointed
director of the laboratory of the Cinematographic Service of the
Belgian Army, which gave him the opportunity to insert original footage
filmed on the battlefields in his post-war patriotic drama
Le mystère de La Libre Belgique ou les exploits des 4 as (1920).
Still active for ten more years Isidore Moray alternated between
fiction
(La maison dans la dune (1925)
and documentaries, often official, before vanishing.