Cinema panel painter Edmond Jamoulle dies at the age of 94.

Actually, the field in which this great artist of Belgian cinema worked deserves its own series of articles. In the period between World War I and the 1970s, the people of Brussels were spoiled for choice when they wanted to watch a film. Every neighbourhood had one or more popular cinemas that were often family businesses, with dad operating the projector, mum selling tickets, an usher and the children helping out with various chores.

So, these cinemas were often run in a traditional, casual way. Mirrors were used as miracle solutions for a variety of purposes. Some boys sometimes tried to use a mirror to fairly divide their attention between the film and their girlfriends. Some clever people could benefit in more than one way from them. Underage customers who managed to sneak into an 18-rated film had to make sure not to get caught out by law enforcement and thrown out for being too young for that particular type of entertainment. Elsewhere, an operator would not have thought twice about extending the cinema seating behind the screen so that more people could watch the film - even it was shown in mirror image. No worries. A man would then just sit on a chair in front of a mirror and shout out the subtitles.

For 50 years, between 1950 and 2000, Edmond Jamoulle painted countless works of art on panels hung on the cinema facade. But these were only temporary because they were soon taken down and bleached for reuse. He was not picky in his commissions: classics, blockbusters, karate, porn films. His mostly arty workplaces have since either disappeared, been listed as historic monuments, or converted into a private film club, convention hall, event space, retirement centre, supermarket, nightclub, etc.

Edmond Jamoulle passed away on 20 June 2025. Three of his original works still hang in the Studio L'Equipe post-production studio in Evere.