Media access will be dropped from public libraries. Some politician decided that everyone has Internet with streaming subscriptions.

Or they figured it’s okay to marginalise those who do not. They assumed no one has a problem with patronising shitty surveillance capitalists like Netflix and Amazon.

IIUC, the only possible ways to watch movies in Belgium without feeding corporate databases is:

  • buying CDs/DVDs with cash
  • theaters (cash paid tickets)
  • the high seas (☠)
  • broadcast TV (does that exist in Brussels? My hand-held dvb-t player finds no signals to tune)

Only two of those options serves the poor. One is illegal and the other is content-constrained. And still out of reach for anyone who can’t afford Internet at home.

English machine translation of the article Servais linked

****** End of the Audiovisual Library: our audiovisual heritage in liquidation ******

***** While the FWB gives up, our neighbours invest: France, Germany, the Netherlands support their media libraries as the pillars of identity and education. *****

External_Contribution

  • Published on 03-11-2025 à 17:06
  • Updated on 03-11-2025 at 17:09

[ Pinching to the heart for those who have spent an incalculable number of hours in a thrilling and endless treasure hunt, through PointCulture bins. ]

An opinion of Maxence Lemaire, teacher and user from Brussels

October likes revolutions. One of this year’s events is brutal: the government of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation has decided to abolish the programme contract of the ASBL Médiathèque Nouvelle, ex-Point Culture. Concrete translation: closure of the centres, loss of 55 professionals and uncertainty about the fate of the 400 000 Belgian and foreign references in music, cinema, documentary and young audience. Our audiovisual heritage, the fruit of 70 years of work, is thus placed in liquidation.

To_read_also The_Federation_Wallonia-Brussels_advertise_the_end_of_the_Media Library_News,55_jobs_threatened:_“We_have_summer_shocked_by_this_decision”

We are told that the population has given a clear mandate to right the budget bar. Of course, but no party program announced the dismantling of the Media Library. As a result, voters did not give any blanks to erase our sound and visual memory.

Change, is it destroying? The real reform would be to modernise the preservation and accessibility of these funds, to better link them to digital. In the face of the economic storm, the courage is not to squander a few percent of the budget, but to keep these islets of breath, which are the arts, sources of vitality and humanity. Preserving our cultural gems is through such an act that true power is expressed.

***** False Pretext *****

We object that the Media Library has become obsolete in the face of streaming. It’s a false pretext. Libraries are not closed on the pretext that there are libraries, nor are they closed because Amazon sells games. The mission of lending and conservation has nothing to do with sales logic. Music platforms are private operators subject to market and algorithm laws. Powerful today, they can disappear tomorrow. Belgian creation is drowned under the label “Benelux”. Moreover, many references available at the Audiovisual Library no longer exist in commerce or online. Public service is the only guarantee of the sustainability of our heritage.

To_read_also The former Media Library

It is claimed that the Audiovisual Library duplicates other institutions. Where can we borrow from another audiovisual catalogue today? Nowhere! Pressenties, the Royal Library of Belgium or the State Archives have neither the mission of the loan nor the expertise required for such collections. To entrust this fund to an unprepared operator is to condemn him to oblivion, it is a first-class burial.

While the FWB gives up, our neighbours invest: France, Germany, the Netherlands support their media libraries as the pillars of identity and education. Muntpunt, the Flemish media library shines in the heart of Brussels, a modern and welcoming flagship rooted in its time. Thus, everywhere else, it is understood that a strong cultural heritage is the backbone of a nation. Why would we be the only ones who would deprive us of it? It would be a cultural exception backwards, a negative exception.

***** One error *****

Certainly, the transformation of the name of La Médiathèque into Point Culture was a mistake, contributing to its invisibility. But after recent sacrifices (reduction of centres and staff) and a return to its designation of origin, the Médiathèque Nouvelle is gradually regaining its identity and raison d’être, particularly with the opening of its pole in Auderghem (Brussels). She deserves to be accompanied.

Love who we are. Keep them, these films and these musics created here or elsewhere: they carry what we were, what you are, and will shed light on what we will be. Will the future of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation be written without audiovisual memory? Will Belgian Francophone amnesia be our European exception? Think further than your initializer: if Churchill defended the culture under the bombs, only spreadsheets hover over your advisors, so it should be less difficult. Let their gum serve repentance rather than erasure.