Belgian francophone cinema mourns death of Henri Ingberg
Henri Ingberg, the General Secretary of the Communauté Française de Belgique, passed away on Sunday evening at the age of 62, following a long illness.
An actor in his early years and a doctor of law, he joined the Ministry of Culture in 1972, and on several occasions headed the cabinets of socialist minister-presidents. Ingberg became head of the Francophone Belgian government in 1996, where he was directly responsible for the Service Général de l'audiovisuel and the Centre du cinéma et de l'audiovisuel.
A man of culture, he was also a lecturer for the management of cultural institutions at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion and the Centre d’Etudes théâtrales at the Catholic University of Leuven.
Belgian francophone cinema is much indebted to Ingberg and most certainly owes its emergence on the international scene to him. Through pushing for more public funding and supporting a number of practical initiatives such as the tax shelter system, his presence gave coherence to the policy of the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Communauté française de Belgique and that of the Télédistributeurs Wallons for over 20 years.
A man of boundless energy, Ingberg recently worked on bringing about closer relationships between the country’s two communities by opening discussions and a partnership with the Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF).
A lover of theatre and the arts in general, he was an ardent defender of quality cinema and saw in its diffusion in Europe the means to maintain its cultural identity and cohesion, by supporting initiatives that moved in this direction, and Cineuropa in particular.
(Translated from French)
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