Henri Storck (5 September 1907 – 17 September 1999) was a Belgian writer, filmmaker and documentarist.
In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. The film was banned in several countries, but he gained worldwide notoriety from the film becoming a milestone in activist cinema. In 1938, with Andre Thirifays and Pierre Vermeylen, he founded the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Royal Belgian Film Archive).
Storck 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 (1975) 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".
In 1959, he was a member of the jury at the 1st Moscow International Film Festival.
Contents
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)
André Cavens Award for Best Film for Permeke (1985)
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 Institut des arts de diffusion (IAD), Bruxelles (1966–1968)
Films
1927–1928
Films d'amateur sur Ostende
1929–1930
Pour vos beaux yeux – 8'
Images d'Ostende – 12'
1930
Une pêche au hareng – 15'
le Service de sauvetage à la côte belge – 18'
Ostende, reine des plages – 11'
Les Fêtes du Centenaire – 7'
Trains de plaisir – 8'
Films abstraits dessinés sur pellicule
La Mort de Vénus – 10'
Suzanne au bain – 10'
1931
Une idylle à la plage – 35'
1932
Les Travaux du tunnel sous l'Escaut – 20'
Histoire du soldat inconnu – 10'
Sur les bords de la caméra – 10' 1933
Trois vies et une corde – 33'
1933
Misère au Borinage – 28' (directed with Joris Ivens, sound since 1963)
1934
Création d'ulcères artificiels chez le chien – 15'