[SIEURINS FRANSKA BILDER]
Emil Sieurin era uno stimato ingegnere svedese impiegato presso la famosa ditta di ceramiche Höganäs nel sud della Svezia (inventò perfino un nuovo metodo di estrazione del ferro), nonché membro dell’Accademia reale svedese delle scienze ingegneristiche (Kungliga Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien). In occasione di una visita a Parigi agli inizi del Novecento, acquistò dalla Gaumont diciannove film tra pellicole di finzione e documentarie, molte delle quali dedicate all’Esposizione universale di Parigi del 1900. Sieurin comprò anche una cinepresa Gaumont, con la quale nel 1901 riprese scene di lavoro e tempo libero nella città natale, Höganäs, nonché eventi pubblici in città più grandi come Helsingborg e Malmö. Con le sue riprese di fabbriche e della vita quotidiana di operai e borghesi, fu un pioniere del cinema svedese, creando alcune delle prime immagini in movimento di persone comuni. A quanto pare i suoi rulli in nitrato e le sue attrezzature furono depositati presso il Museo di Scienza e Tecnologia (del quale Sieurin era membro) alla fine degli anni Venti, cioè prima che il museo ospitasse le collezioni dello Svenska Filmsamfundet (il nucleo originario degli archivi di Svenska Filminstitutet), la cui fondazione risale al 1933. Le indagini degli storici finora indicano che né il rullo Gaumont né i filmati svedesi furono mai proiettati in pubblico. È un fatto ben noto che persone di formazione tecnico-scientifica si appassionassero alla modernità del nuovo mezzo. Si pensi per esempio ad Antonino Sagarmínaga, un industriale che acquistava i film per proiettarli in un circolo culturale di Bilbao, la cui collezione è conservata presso la Filmoteca Española. I film destinati a un pubblico privato o a cerchie ristrette di associazioni anziché a proiezioni pubbliche costituiscono una parte rilevante e interessante della storia del cinema delle origini, e in questo contesto si colloca l’affascinante figura di Sieurin, a maggior ragione per il fatto che girò lui stesso dei film.

Jon Wengström, Camille Blot-Wellens 

THE PHONO-CINÉMA-THÉÂTRE TOURING (STOCKHOLM 1901)
Among the shows presented during the Paris Exposition, the Phono-Cinéma- Théâtre is particularly interesting, both from the technical and artistic point of view. Its programmes mingled different genres: sound films synchronised with the phonograph (songs, monologues, extracts from plays), but also dances and pantomimes simply accompanied by a pianist or orchestra. There was also a sound-effects man and possibly a bonimenteur (narrator). The films were made in ‘playback’, like the later phonoscènes, using Henri Lioret’s Idéal phonograph, which could record four minutes on large cylinders. The synchronisation was manually controlled by the projectionists, who slowed or accelerated the phonographic cylinder as necessary. In 2011-2012 the Cinémathèque française and Gaumont Pathé Archives, in collaboration with Lobster Films, L’Immagine Ritrovata and the sound expert Henri Chamoux restored and reconstituted as far as possible the repertoire of the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, with its original sound. The majority of the cylinders are conserved at the Musée de Radio-France in Paris. Chamoux perfected an apparatus to read and record cylinders that were in bad condition or even broken. The synchronisation was therefore once again possible. Keep your ears open: the sound is, as it was at then, far from perfect! And savour the pleasure of seeing, sometimes in colour, the élite of dance, theatre, pantomime and music- hall of the Belle Époque: Sarah Bernhardt, Jeanne Hatto, Benoît-Constant Coquelin, Little Tich, Cléo de Mérode, Jules Moy… Laurent Mannoni  Of the 39 films that made up the repertoire of the Phono-Cinéma-Theâtre, 13 were originally accompanied by recorded sound. Of these, an amazing 33 films and eight cylinders have been recovered and restored; they were presented first at the Giornate del Cinema Muto 2012, and subsequently elsewhere, neatly grouped by stage genre, in one fulllength programme. The only trace of an original programme for the 1900 Paris Exposition, comprising five films, seems to be a transcript published by Jacques Deslandes and Jacques Richard, in their unsurpassed Histoire comparée du Cinéma (Tome II, 1968, p. 68). In 1901-1902, the initiator and artistic director of the Phono-Cinéma- Théâtre, actress and dancer Marguerite Vrignault, toured with the show in Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Britain, Germany, Austria and Italy, and here we have detailed information about the contents and structure of the shows as flyers of two programmes presented in Germany in 1901 are in the Julien Anton collection on phonorama.fr, and the programme of a Stockholm show of the same year is reproduced in Desland and Richard, op. cit. The shows featured, with a few variations, 16-19 titles (out of 22 or about half of the repertoire), screened in two blocks of eight or nine films. They might begin or be completed by animated photographs from the Exposition or an actuality film – the Funeral of Queen Victoria (4 February 1901) or the Paris-Berlin Motor Carriage Race (27-29 June 1901). We present the first part of the programme screened in the Olympiateatern in Stockholm, since all its films are existing, plus a Gaumont newsreel of Queen Victoria’s funeral.

Mariann Lewinsky