Frequently Asked Questions
Here you’ll find answers to the questions most often asked about the Film in the Netherlands site. If your question isn’t answered here, contact us using the Contact button at the bottom of the page.
When you click on a title that is available online, you should notice this immediately: the player will begin to load directly. It can take approximately 30 seconds before the film begins to play.
No film: There is a good chance that the title you have selected has unfortunately not been preserved. The website currently has information about nearly 2,300 early films; many of these have been lost. It is estimated that around 500 out of those 2,300 films have been preserved. More than 270 of these preserved films can be viewed in their entirety on this site, and there are fragments from nearly 50 other early films that are also available. The primary reason why we are unable to provide access to all of the preserved films is because EYE doesn’t hold the rights to the film.
See also About Film in the Netherlands
See also The Oldest Dutch Films in the Eye Archives
Fragments: Complete films are only offered whenever they are in the public domain. If the rights to a film are held by another party, then it’s generally not allowed to show the film for free. In some of these cases however, the Film in the Netherlands website provides access to a fragment of the film. For a small fee, these films are available for viewing in their entirety on Ximon, a website that enables viewers to watch Dutch films and television series. Ximon is a collaborative project initiated by EYE Film Institute Netherlands, the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision and the Dutch Feature Film Association (NVS).
If you don’t know a film’s title, director or year of release, you can search for it by entering a (place) name or other keyword into the search field located in the upper-right-hand part of the screen. This will generate a list of results from the database that are related to your keyword.
If your search returns too many results, you can refine your query. Go to the Search options menu found to the left of your search results. Under ‘filter by type’, select ‘films’. After you’ve done this, you can refine even further by selecting a genre or a keyword.
In the database, the film titles which have an online film are indicated with an icon. (See browse films by title)
The search results don't have such an indication yet, and it is still necessary to click the result itself. If the link opens with a frame, there is a film, otherwise, this is not (yet) the case. In the near future, search results will include an icon indicating whether they include a film or not.
Yes. After you’ve performed a search, a search options menu will appear to the left of your search results. Here you will find many different filters that can be used in combination with each other.
It can be helpful to use the ‘filter by films’ option to sort your search results; in this way, all articles, companies and people results are filtered out of your list.
This website is a work in progress, and new films will be continually added. However, these will mainly be later films, because almost every early film that is available is now currently online.
There are currently three other online sites that stream films and fragments. These are:
Ximon, a pay-per-view video-on-demand website for Dutch feature films, documentaries and TV series
Instant cinema, an online community for experimental film and video art
Scene Machine, a (free) random fragment generator that serves up bite-sized films from EYE’s early Dutch film collection
Unfortunately, the films cannot be viewed on iPads or iPhones because these devices do not support Flash. There are, however, a variety of apps available to enable the viewing of Flash videos – try, for example, Skyfire or iSwifter.
Check your browser specifications. This website was designed for the following specifications:
Screen resolution 1024x768 and higher
Browser compatibility:
Internet Explorer 7
Firefox 3 and higher
Safari 3 (Windows and Mac)
IE6 is no longer supported.
Film in the Netherlands is an EYE Film Institute Netherlands website. All the films, photographs and posters on the website are part of EYE’s own collection. This website sketches an image of the developments in Dutch film history based on the collection.
See also About Film in the Netherlands.
There is an option to comment on every specific item in the database – simply fill in the comment form underneath each item. In order to comment on items, you must be a registered user. Only registered users can see the comments from other users.
See Terms of use
See Registration
For more general comments, you can use Contact, found in the menu at bottom of every page. There is no registration necessary for this option, and your comments will not be made public to other site visitors.
Because questions and comments on the website are visible for other (registered) users. If you don’t want to register, you can use Contact, found in the menu at bottom of every page. Your message will be directed to our web editors and will not be visible to other registered users.
Send us a message via Contact - also found in the menu at the bottom of every page. We will process your request as soon as possible.
Many Dutch sound films (from 1934 onwards) have been released on DVD and can be ordered at http://www.tdmentertainment.com/. Click on ‘Dutch film’ at the bottom left side of the screen.
In some cases, EYE can put unreleased films on DVD for home use; bear in mind, however, that EYE is unable to provide most of the films that are unavailable for viewing online at Film in the Netherlands. Requests should be submitted via 'Contact' in the menu at the bottom of every page.
Please contact Ms. Ronny Temme
sales@eyefilm.nl
Telephone +31(0) 20 5891 426
Mobile +31(0) 6 5578 2814
See also http://eyefilm.nl/en/collection/film-sales
Terms of use Film in the Netherlands
At the bottom of every page is the Contact link - your message will be directed to our web editors and will not be visible to other users.
At this time there is no list, but EYE is currently working on making one. However, the titles in the film database (browse films by title) have a symbol indicating if an online film is attached.
The information on this website is organised into four levels. These can be found in the menu at the top of the page: Who’s who, Timeline, Film history and Database. The first two levels have been created for the general public; to use the third and fourth levels, a bit of background knowledge is handy (but not necessarily required). The first three levels are linked to films in the film database whenever relevant.
Who is... uses short documentaries to give you an idea about important people in Dutch film history. The first film starts automatically after you click on Who’s who; other people can be selected from the left-hand menu.Who’s who is a good way to get a quick impression of a number of central figures in Dutch film industry and the time in which they lived.
Timeline offers a chronological overview of the most important moments in Dutch film history.
Film history focuses on historical developments (this level differs from the Timeline, which only covers events). Film history features longer texts with a separate list of related films and articles.
Database is a large collection of pages about films, people and companies. By typing a keyword into the search field on the upper right side of the page, a list of search results is generated from the database. The database is accessible for research purposes, which is why it also has many pages from films that have been lost and are not available for viewing.
Nevertheless, entering your town or surname in the search field can result in interesting hits in order to see if there are related people, companies or films.