oa Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization in Interwar Belgium

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From its first appearance in the early nineteen-twenties, Catholics were quick to embrace the opportunities offered by ‘film fixe’, a spooled roll of 35 mm (sometimes also 30 mm) positive film on which between twenty and fifty images were reproduced back to back in sequential order. These images were to be projected one by one on a large screen, with the lecturer providing the necessary commentary. At the time, the Church was trying hard to maintain its influence in Belgian society, as it was seeing its position threatened by an ever-growing number of secular organizations, spreading their ‘corrupting’ messages using illustrated lectures and motion pictures. The Catholics’ ambiguous attitude towards visual media would lead them to explore and experiment with various modern media in a bid to maintain moral and educational control over image consumption by youngsters. By studying producers’ and the Catholic discourse on the introduction and use of film fixe projection in religious teaching and evangelization in interwar Belgium, this article investigates how and why film fixe became an important pedagogical tool for Belgian Catholic teachers, priests, and organizations. This paper draws on the concept of dispositif, which will allow to better understand the intermedial relationships between various types of light projection and why some images were seen as trustworthy and others were not.