25e Internationaal Filmfestival van Vlaanderen-Gent 1998

Five truly gifted people win the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award in 1998: American composer Elmer Bernstein, English actor Sir Peter Ustinov, American director Robert Wise, Japanese director Shohei Imamura and French director Alain Resnais. There is a special tribute in honour of these three directors dedicated to their work. The festival screens at least 12 films by each director. Alain Resnais comes to Ghent for this occasion. A whole delegation of Flemish film talent is also present at the festival, including Patrice Toye (director), Jaco Van Dormael (director), Dirk Roofthooft (actor), Francesca Van Thielen (actress) and Peter Van Den Begin (actor).

The Back to Basics exhibition is also part of the festival. It looks back to the first steps of cinema: the technical principles used in the Belgian devices of Joseph Plateau and Etienne-Gaspard Robertson are still relevant to cinema today. The phenakistiscope and the phantoscope are therefore given a prominent place in it. In thematic relation with the exhibition, a "Laterna Magica Galantee Show" is organised at St Peter's Abbey. Five artists perform, using an authentic magic lantern, an old apparatus that can project scenes taking place outside into an illuminated room. The photography exhibition Filmmaker-Photographers shows the relationship between filmmakers and photography on the one hand and photographers and film on the other.