Exhibition: Lumière: Discovered / Rochester, NY, until 3 November 2024

[Michael Pritchard]

The exhibition Lumière: Discovered represents the discovery of eighteen short rolls of 35mm movie film that were produced by the Lumière brothers, who were among the originators of motion pictures. Auguste and Louis Lumière were French inventors who developed the Cinématographe, an all-in-one device featuring a movie camera, film developing processor, contact printer, and projector. This invention enabled the Lumières to emerge at the forefront of the development of cinema as a new artform.

The Lumière films, which often showed brief scenes of everyday life, caused a sensation among the public. While other inventors claimed to be the first to exhibit a movie, the Lumière brothers’ combined inventiveness, business acumen, and showmanship spurred the early growth of the film industry with over 1,400 films produced under the Lumière banner between 1895 and 1905.

It is no small miracle that this rare collection of films was found in excellent condition, and acquired by the museum, in 2017. All of the original nitrate film elements are fully preserved and stored in the George Eastman Museum’s Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center. New audiences now have the opportunity to sample the Lumière company’s filmmaking efforts of 120 years ago made with the fledgling medium. The subjects represent a broad sampling of subject matter ranging from documents of events to an ambitious staging of Victor Hugo’s famous novel Notre-Dame de Paris.

The films in this program were preserved by Samuel B. Lane as part of the Haghefilm Fellowship program held in collaboration with the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the Eastman Museum. Thanks to Clara Auclair and Samuel B. Lane for filmographic research and individual film descriptions that follow.

There are seventeen short films ranging from a few seconds to nearly three minutes in length. Total program length is nineteen minutes. 

Lumière: Discovered
until 3 November 2024
Eastman Museum, Rochester NY

Read more here: https://www.eastman.org/lumiere-discovered

[Alan Hodgson]

The Lumière brothers did some fascinating work. My interest in them is twofold.

1. I recall them contributing some significant comments on the evolution of photographic science in France in the 1890s. I plan to revisit this.
2. Like Ilford their business later became part of the Ciba Geigy empire. Around 2004 Ilford looked at recreating their Autochrome process for the centenary. I was looking into using existing glass plate technology for this.

If anyone has researched their work around photo emulsion development I would be pleased to hear from you.