A small ode to the Cinematek

Yes, I know this is about one very specific cinema in Brussels. Let me have this.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life when things shifted as much as they have since I moved to Brussels. Not just the big, dramatic, life-is-a-movie kind of change (though there was some of that too), but the quieter, messier, different kind. Friends leave, jobs end, new people appear, I accidentally become a different person four times a year. Brussels isn’t a city that lets you sit still for long.

But through it all: the Cinematek.

I know. It’s kind of ridiculous to write an ode to a single cinema and a niche one, at that, in a city that isn’t even known because of its cinematic tradition. But the Cinematek has quietly become one of my constants. A fixed point in a city that never stops shifting. One friend even calls it Teresa HQ, and honestly, she’s not wrong.

It’s not flashy, but it’s cool. The glowing blue LED sign at the entrance feels like a sci-fi portal, especially in the dark. The queue for the screening rooms often snakes up the stairs in hushed anticipation. The people who work there are kind in that non-performative, unfussy way that makes you feel immediately welcome. There’s a little water machine in the corridor where the water is always ice-cold and tastes better than any water I’ve had before.

The Cinematek doesn’t sell popcorn. It doesn’t play trailers (usually). It often doesn’t even explain what you’re about to watch. You just check the listing, squint at the two-line blurb (or the total absence of one), and show up. And once you’re in (in those surprisingly comfortable chairs), you sit back, and let the weirdness unfold. It’s one of the few places that trusts you to figure it out, or at least enjoy being confused.

I’ve watched films there that rearranged my brain (I Saw the TV Glow still haunts me), and I’ve rewatched ones I already loved like Lost in Translation, my forever favourite, washed over me again in that room like an old memory (yes, I cried at the end). But I’ve also sat through Ghost Dad, which was so bad it became art, and Lulu on the Bridge, which felt like a fever dream, especially with my friend and I inappropriately laughing every 10 minutes.

That friend and I had a Cinematek ritual. Coffee and a pastry before. Metro debrief after. We didn’t always know what we were watching, but that didn’t matter. It became our place, quietly, with no ceremony. Before she left Brussels, we went one last time. The was no dramatic goodbye, just the comfort of the routine we’d built together. I can’t tell you what we watched, but I can tell you how the metro looked afterwards, and how we talked like we always did, as if nothing was about to end.

The Cinematek isn’t only for the snobs. I do love a broody auteur moment, obviously. But the real joy is when they throw on something like Top Gun or Dead Poets Society, or some iconic 90s rom-com I’ve always meant to watch. There’s something deeply comforting about watching those classics for the first time not on a laptop, not half-distracted, but in a dark cinema where everyone’s quietly invested. Those movies hold history, and the Cinematek gives them the reverence they deserve, even when they’re cheesy or over-the-top or the quality is so bad you’re scared the movie is just going to stop.

Also: only the Cinematek would program Satyricon at 3PM on a Sunday. Or Territoires de la Défonce at 5PM, when the rest of the city is still digesting their moules and waffles (I know, I know, not all Belgians). There’s something oddly perfect about that. Like a joke only you and the building are in on.

I’ve gone alone more often than not. Sometimes because I didn’t know who else would be into a movie that caters to my very specific niche tastes, like a movie about the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but mostly because being alone there doesn’t feel lonely. It feels right. Like part of the experience is sitting quietly beside strangers, all of you choosing to be there, all excited for different reasons. It’s one of the few places where being alone in public feels intentional for me. Like you're participating in a communal solitude.

And that’s maybe why I love it so much. The Cinematek has been a place to feel things, to be in the dark, to get completely derailed by a scene or a line or a look. It’s been a barometer for my emotional weather. It’s seen versions of me I’ve forgotten, and versions of me I haven’t yet fully become. It just lets me be, and that’s also what makes me come back (almost) every week.

So here’s to the Cinematek: the coolest spot in a city that never sits still. Thank you for the silence, the soft chairs, the icy water, the terrible movies, the near-religious screenings, the friends that became closer, the Sunday afternoons that felt like small, beautiful rituals, and the part of me that always feels most like herself under that blue neon sign.