Hilde D'haeyere is a photographer and film historian who investigates photographic aspects of silent cinema.  

As a photographer of art and architecture, she has been working for the painter Raoul De Keyser since 2004. First funded with a research grant by the Flemish Government (2004-2007), later for specific book and exhibition projects, she has been focusing mainly on paintings made between 1964 and 1980, tracing them in private collections, photographing them, and managing the image bank. Images from this extensive collection have been used in a range of international publications, in which she also participates as an author.  

Much of her academic work is on slapstick comedy, with a focus on film style, movie technology and the mechanisms of humor. She publishes articles and performs lectures that result from hands-on and embodied research methods that reactivate film history. Her research interests range from screen comedy, female directors, and film color processes, to playful interactions between film history, academic language, and practice-based research methods. 

Recent publications include Mack Sennett in Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies (Oxford University Press, 2015), Frankfurter Slapstick: Benjamin, Kracauer and Adorno on American Screen Comedy, in October 160 (2017) co-authored with Steven Jacobs, Comedy Performs Photography in Photography Performs Humor (Leuven University Press, 2019), and Real Estates: The Comedy of Spaces and Things in Demain, on déménage in Chantal Akerman: Afterlives (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019) and Des soirées bien parisiennes: Film Projects in Sonia Delaunay: Living Art (NY: Bard Center, 2024) co-authored with Steven Jacobs.   

Recent lecture-performances include Cinemacine (2017), Slapstick Movies on Moviemaking (2018), The Original Snow White (2019-2022), and L'Hôpital-Paradis des Dames d'Écosse (2023-2024). 

She lectures at KASK & Conservatorium where she heads the master's programme in Film.