Frank Roumen (1963-2026)

 © Joost Bataille / Eye Filmmuseum

It is with great sadness that we inform you that our colleague Frank Roumen passed away on 22 January at the age of 62, after a period of illness. Frank was a creative multi-tasker, and worked for 35 years in various departments at Eye Filmmuseum. He started out in the education department and went on to work in the programming, eventually becoming the head of that department. About fifteen years ago he moved to the collection department, becoming head of collections. Thanks to his inspiring leadership, Frank left an important mark on the various activities of Eye Filmmuseum.

In the programming department, Frank worked closely with filmmaker and then artistic director Peter Delpeut, producing several of his films using archival footage, such as the Cinema Perdu series (1995, broadcast by VPRO), De Tijdmachine (1996) and Diva Dolorosa (1999). He also produced films by others using the Filmmuseum archive as a starting point, such as De nacht van de vier hoeden (The Night of the Four Hats, 1999) by Céline Linssen, Tillema: de Multatuli van de fotografie (2002) by Herman de Boer, Een ontdekkingsreis naar Tarakan (2002) by Karel Doing, and Bali, de Morgen van de Wereld (2002) by Rien Hagen. At this time he also co-directed Tabee (2002) together with Nico de Klerk. As co-producer on behalf of Eye Filmmuseum, Frank was also involved in films such as Welt Spiegel Kino (2005) by Gustav Deutsch, De bankroet-jazz (2006) by Leo van Maaren, and When Forever Dies (2020) by Peet Gelderblom.

During his time in the programming department, Frank also wrote and directed theatrical children's shows that can be considered innovative for their use of archival footage as an integral part. In this way, he developed a format in which young audiences could be introduced to early cinema in a playful way. Vliegenier junior en de Lindbergh-vlucht (1999), for example, featured archival footage chronicling the exploits of aviation pioneers. Other productions were De wereld van de wijs (2003) and De grote verhuizing (2007). His last children's show was created on the occasion of the opening of Eye's new museum building in Amsterdam North in 2012: A Trip Around the World in 50 Minutes.

At Eye's collection department, among other things, Frank oversaw the relocation of the collection of more than 210,000 film cans, 95,000 film posters, 750,000 photo stills, and 30,000 books to the new collection center, opened in 2016. He also continued his work as a producer, culminating in the 2020 compilation film The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902), using Eye's oldest films made by the Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

Frank Roumen was a wonderful, enthusiastic and kind colleague who, with his organizational talent, humor, creativity and decisive leadership, added colour to everyone's work. He will be greatly missed.  

Colleagues from Eye Filmmuseum