20/08/2013 - Eliane Dubois, a historical Belgian distributor and founder of Cinéart, died at the age of 65. Author cinema is in mourning

We have just been informed of the passing of Eliane Dubois, 65, an important figure of author cinema in Belgium, and the founder in 1975 of Cinéart-Cinélibre, the biggest independent cinematographic distribution company in Benelux.

For nearly 40 years now, Cinéart has been supporting author cinema around the world, and in Belgium in particular, by working to make it accessible to wider audiences, in an increasingly competitive market, which underwent important mutations over the past few years.

Distribution, or circulation, appears to be a vocation for Eliane Dubois. She was 20 years old in 1968 when she graduated from the INSAS, where she had learned editing, and contributed with several friends to the circulation of short 16mm films about the students and workers’ struggle. This struggle, which was at the origin of the creation of Cinéart, was aimed at making films visible, even beyond the classical network of theatres. Far from imaging what the organization would become, Eliane Dubois struggled with Cinéart in the 70’s and 80’s to show author films, notably by buying cinemas that had become iconic in Brussels.

At the beginning of the 90’s, the fight takes a new turn. Cinéart realizes that to continue distributing demanding films, it would also have to distribute locomotives that would “wipe out” debts and bring about profits, and thus financial support. With the delegate release with Gaumont of Grosse Fatigue in 1994 begins a fruitful collaboration with Studio Canal, which will enable Cinéart to perpetuate its mission of diffusing author cinema, whilst at the same time becoming an industry heavy weight.

In the years 2000, Cinéart goes along with sector mutations and develops its DVD and then VoD offers, notably through the creation of Twinpics, jointly with the Belgian music editor PIAS. Cinéart thus offers its range more widely, as well as new titles, which were not circulated when they were released on screens.

Still today, Cinéart’s strength, under the drive of its founder, is to have been able to find, to use Eliane Dubois’s words, a balance between “industry films”, and those from “the research laboratory” of cinema. By mixing in her catalogue quality popular titles and masterpieces of author cinema, Cinéart managed to develop a real policy of support for major filmmakers from world cinema, from Ken Loach to Emir Kusturica, as well as the Dardenne brothers of course. As a key player in the market, Cinéart has become an undeniable reference, distributing for example 6 of the past 10 Palmes d’or, including the latest, Blue is the Warmest Colour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Abdellatif Kechiche
film profile]. Cinéart also played and still plays a major role in the circulation of Belgian cinema in Belgium, having backed the young guard of Belgian cinema from Bouli Lanners to François Pirot and Joachim Lafosse.

It is therefore a great figure of Belgian cinema who disappeared, but she leaves behind her a jewel of art and cinematographic industry.

Click here to read the interview of Eliane Dubois, published last April, and here for the interview given to Cinergie for Cinéart’s 30^th anniversary. 

(Translated from French)