Netherlands

Netherlands

By Kallan Benjamin

Cinema en Theater was a Dutch theater and film journal published from Leiden. It ran from 1921–1944, under a few different names, and featured Dutch, other European, and American stars and films. The Dutch film industry was small, though the Netherlands’ neutrality in WWI allowed it to continue making films when many other European countries could not, resulting in a small boom period and producing some popular domestic stars, including Annie Bos (who can be seen in “Die vrouw, die lacht” (“The woman, the laugh”) in Issue No. 14 below, for example). Cinema en Theater also plays a sad role in wartime history, as a favorite magazine of Anne Frank. She collected images of movie stars, even while in hiding, and she writes in a January 27, 1944 diary entry:

“I still spend many Sundays arranging and sorting my large movie-star collection, which has taken on extremely respectable dimensions. Mr. Kugler does me a great favor when he brings me a copy of Cinema & Theater each Monday.”

- Anne Frank, January 27 1944