The Nova Museum

"Welcome to what used to be a cinema, a place of meetings and cinematographic discoveries, of experiments and exchanges, a living place, a long time ago!

To celebrate (finally!) the reopening of movie theaters, let's go back to an event that a few lucky people had the opportunity to enjoy for a weekend in Brussels: last March, the Nova cinema was converted into a unique museum, paying tribute to the 7th art in a surprising way, to say the least.

More than a cinema, the Nova is a venue that, since 1997, has reinvented the idea of going to the movies and has become a real place of exchange, known for its spirit and its vocation to be the theater of meetings. The Nova Museum, a museum of the "vestiges of the cinema of yesteryear", proposed a cultural proto-archaeology, in order to present to the curious what was a living place, rich in cinematographic and human discoveries.

In the continuity of the actions put in place following the call of Still Standing For Culture, in response to the abandonment of cultural institutions, the event took place in the respect of the measures applied to museum institutions and art galleries. Reacting to the endless months of closure of theaters, the exhibition took place in a universe where cinema no longer exists, where it is a relic of the past that must be explained to new generations. A place where people used to gather to watch films together, in the dark. But if the films, these retranscriptions of reality on film, were played by people whose job, that of actor, was to transmit emotions to the screen.

An extraordinary staging, which allows us to retrace the history of cinema on the one hand, and that of Belgian cinemas on the other. Wandering between the installations, the machines, the reels and the old posters, one wonders: What if the Cinema really did not exist anymore?

Posterissim slipped in among the visitors and shares with you today the images of this particularly moving visit.

Cherry on the cake, in the basement, the bar of the Nova cinema is not in rest. Known for its incredible parties and its agitated nights, it is inhabited by the ghosts of the world of before which seem to have evaporated of a blow of only one, without reason nor explanation, leaving full glasses and umbrellas behind them. They are replaced by a slide show that scrolls before our amazed eyes (not really used to this kind of festive scenes) the photographs of night owls whose joy is only equalled by their drunkenness.

Feel free to tell us in the comments what you thought of this article, and see you soon on the Posterissim Blog!