Henri Storck

Henri Storck (1907, Ostend – 17 September 1999) was a Belgian author, film-maker and documentarist.

In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with Andre Thirifays and Pierre Vermeylen, he founded the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Royal Belgian Film Archive). He was an actor in two key films of the history of the cinema: Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite (1933) in the role of the priest, and Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quay Commercial, 1080 Brussels (1976) in the role of a customer of the prostitute.

Jacqueline Aubenas wrote about him, in her expository work, It's been going on for 100 years: a history of the francophone cinema of Belgium: "There emerges forcefully the personality of a cineaste who is not a militant in the sense that this term had in the 1930s for Soviet directors who held an ideology, but in the sense of a generous man who will never choose the wrong side and who will be, in ethics as well as in esthetics, in the first line of battle".

Awards and achievements

• Doctor honoris causa of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (1978) and the Université libre de Bruxelles (1995)
• cofounder with André Thirifays and Pierre Vermeylen, of the Cinémathèque de Belgique (1938)
• honorary president of the Association belge des auteurs de films et de télévision (1992)
• founder member of the Association internationale des documentalistes (AID, 1963)
• lecturer at the......
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