André Thirifays

André Thirifays co-founded the Cinémathèque de Belgique (future Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique) with Pierre Vermeylen and Henri Storck in 1938, and was its administrator until 1958. In the late 1930s he befriended Henri Langlois, which helped the Cinémathèque establish international contacts. In 1944 Thirifays recruited Jacques Ledoux as the Cinémathèque’s first Curator, and two years later the Cinémathèque was admitted as FIAF Member, during the first post-war FIAF Congress in Paris.

Thirifays was an active figure of the FIAF Executive Community, where he occupied the positions of Vice-President, Secretary-General, and Treasurer between 1949 and 1959. In 1958, he was the Director General of the World Film Festival organized by the Cinémathèque de Belgique as part of the 1958 Brussels Universal Exhibition.

He was also a long-time film and television critic for the daily Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

"André Thirifays, l’homme tranquille", interview in French published in 1989 by Cinergie

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