Sat
02/07
Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni > 12:15
Museum of the here and now – Actualities / Méliès Star Film 1896 / Spectacle. The Power of the Cinématographe
Serge Bromberg
Donald Sosin and Serge Bromberg
Museum of the here and now – Actualities
As material objects, these Lumière views are a homogeneous batch. Our screenings take place in 2016, and the 35mm prints screened here were made twenty years ago, in 1995, via intermediary elements, struck from negatives that were exposed and developed in 1896, a hundred and twenty years ago. What appears today on the screen happened to be in front of a Lumière Cinématographe a hundred and twenty years ago.
During their screenings, however, the views do not all stay there, in 1896; they behave in many different ways (and individually with different viewers). A flag flying, for example, crosses over easily and reaches the present, so does the play of light and shadow on a Boston tramway, and while a Tsar or a dowager Empress of Russia remains bound to the past, animals and children are free, timeless.
The uncanny magic of time in these very early films is overwhelming. How is it possible that we should be permitted to see the past, in 50 second glimpses. The old harbour of Marseilles, silvery sardines taken from nets, boys skating back and forth, a bird unfolding its wings – they appear and reappear, and every time we are engulfed in their present time, le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui.
Mariann Lewinsky
Méliès Star Film 1896
Magician Georges Méliès, owner of the theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris, attended the first public screening of the Lumière Cinématographe December 28, 1895, and realized how valuable such an attraction would be for his venue. Alas, the Lumière brothers refused to sell him a cinématographe, so he went to Robert William Paul in England to buy his first apparatus.
He started filming the most common subjects, documentaries, men playing cards, children, etc. until one day his camera stopped while filming the Place de l’Opéra, resulting in the first accidental stop-motion special effect.
Méliès quickly specialized in trick films. He shot a series of films in his Montreuil garden, and built the first film studio in 1897 in the same place. Because Méliès destroyed his own negatives in 1923, he became the symbol of lost films, and discoveries of new title today seem almost impossible (220 films survive of his 520 productions).
This programme includes films shot by Méliès 120 years ago in 1896, which was his first year of production. Only a handful of titles survive of the 80 films he made that year.
Serge Bromberg
Spectacle. The Power of the Cinématographe
You turn the handle a few times and your machine transforms a pig into appetizing sausages. You turn the handle a few times, and your Cinématographe transforms whatever it films into a spectacular appearance, endowing everything with meaning, mystery and glamour. Everybody becomes a protagonist, a performer. This effect is less noticeable in performances such as music-hall numbers and in family films (where people put on little shows for the benefit of the camera) and is at its strongest in apparently unarranged scenes of play or work, such as Bassin des Tuileries, Chargement du Coke and Mauvaises herbes.
The views Lumière form an amazing documentation of work, much of it collective and unmechanized, done by groups of men, women and animals in orchestrated movements. Captured by the Cinématographe they appear as effortless choreographies when screened now in front of audiences no longer familiar with such kind of work and the sight of it.
Mariann Lewinsky
ProjectionInfo
Subtitle
Original version with simultaneous translation through headphones
Admittance
PORT DE LA JOLIETTE
PÊCHE AUX SARDINES
PATINEURS AU PARC CENTRAL
LA FOULE
FULTON STREET
PÉLICANS
LES SOUVERAINS ET LES INVITÉS SE RENDANT AU SACRE (ESCALIER ROUGE)
L’IMPÉRATRICE MÈRE ET LA GRANDE-DUCHESSE EUGÉNIE EN CARROSSE
TSAR ET TSARINE ENTRANT DANS L’ÉGLISE DE L’ASSOMPTION
ENFANT ET CHIEN
UNE PARTIE DE CARTES
DÉFENSE D’AFFICHER
UNE NUIT TERRIBLE
ESCAMOTAGE D’UNE DAME CHEZ ROBERT-HOUDIN
LE MANOIR DU DIABLE
LE CAUCHEMAR
Silent film with sound added
CYCLISTES ET CAVALIERS ARRIVANT AU COTTAGE
PIGEONS SUR LA PLACE SAINT-MARC
BASSIN DES TUILERIES
CHARGEMENT DU COKE
COMTESSE DE MONTEBELLO
VIENNE: RETOUR DES COURSES
COURSE EN SACS
DUEL AU PISTOLET (LONGUEUR: 12 MÈTRES)
GÉANT ET NAIN
MAUVAISES HERBES
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