le projet Lumire - Archives Françaises du Film

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« The Lumière Project »
For the 1995 Film Centenary celebrations, the Ministry of
Culture entrusted the AFF of the CNC (National Center for
Cinema), which were then known as Service des archives du
film, with the mission of piecing back together and restoring
the entire Lumière collection, which the AFF was already
largely in charge of preserving.
The "Lumière Project": a mission for Archives
The AFF had to search for information on the films shot by Auguste and Louis Lumière and by their
cameramen between 1895 and 1903. They received help from about fifty foreign historians notified by the
curator, Michelle Aubert, at the FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) symposium in Havana in
1990.
Under her management, a team of three people consisting of Anne Gauthier, Jean-Marc Lamotte and Robert
Poupard was created to successfully conduct the identification and cataloguing phase of the "Lumière
Project".
The purpose was to make the most complete filmography available to the public, for a corpus that is still not well
known or easy to access. Before the Lumière Project, copies were rare and non-specialists’ knowledge of the
Lumière films was limited to a few symbolic titles ("Exiting the Factory", "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat",
"Tables Turned on the Gardener", "Baby’s Dinner").
A second team was created at the Lyon II University, which studied the distribution of Lumière films in France
and abroad. A catalogue entitled "La production cinématographique des frères Lumière", edited by Michelle
Aubert and Jean-Claude Seguin and published by the BiFi, Editions Mémoires de cinéma, 1er siècle du cinéma,
shows the work performed jointly by the different teams.
« The Lumière Project », a journey of discovery AFF – CNC on line www.cnc-aff.fr
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Identifying films: filmstrips and a catalogue
A Lumière film is a celluloid film strip that is 35 mm wide and 17 meters long on average, representing
approximately 800 photograms, which is about forty seconds worth of projection.
It features a round perforation in the bottom third of each side of the image. This highly characteristic perforation
means that it was produced with a Lumière camera.
Despite this physical trace, the lack of specific information made it difficult to identify the films. With no credits,
no actors, no specific shooting location, and sometimes even no specific action, how could the films be
identified?
The Lumière company, based in Lyons used to sell the films to fairgrounds people. Therefore, some sales
"catalogues" were compiled, with the film titles and numbers. From these different catalogs, a complete list of
1,423 titles could be established. Identification consisted of assigning each roll of film its title and catalogue
number.
Identification relied on three sources:
1) Société Lumière had created cardboards on which four
photograms of each film were associated to a catalogue
number. These photo boards made it possible to irrefutably
identify the films.
However, these were incomplete and covered less than 800
films.
Lumière N° 1034 - Puits de pétrole à Bakou
© Association frères Lumière
2) Some films, before the first image appeared, bore traces of scratched numbers. Unfortunately, this numbering
system did not match the catalogue numbering. The films had been numbered after they were copied in the
1960s for the Cinémathèque française, thus providing no help.
The initial numbering system was written by quill on the leaders of some film strips, making it possible to
positively identify the film, but it was hard to detect.
Multiple films no longer had their leaders and began right away with an image, making it impossible to find their
numbers.
3) External sources made essential contributions. Accounts given at the time (such as press reports describing the
films or letters from cameramen to their families) and work done by historians and specialists (who identified
military uniforms, for example) made it possible to complete the information provided by the films themselves.
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Restoration of the films: three solutions to one photographic problem
When came the time to handle the films, the Lumière team was surprised at their exceptional state of
preservation.
The film strips were not damaged by the decomposition of the
nitrate medium.
This can be partially explained by the Lumière brothers’ training,
which enabled them to find a high-quality nitrate medium, as
evidenced by the correspondence between Louis Lumière and
Victor Planchon, a film manufacturer.
Well developed and washed, these media withstood the test of time
far better than others.
Lumière N° 627 - Attelage d'un camion
♦
The Lumière brothers and their successors were aware of the historic value of these films. They kept them in
optimal conditions, leaving them in their original tin boxes, with adequate ventilation and without the core
which generally compresses the film.
♦
The non-standard round perforations of the Lumière films could not go through the laboratories’ modern
equipment. The driving mechanisms of the original cameras had to be recreated to re-print the films. That is
why the films had never been entirely restored. At the very most, the Cinémathèque française made contact
prints in the 1960s. The negatives were therefore not much handled and not much damaged.
The AFF laboratory made the sprockets that made it possible to use modern printers with the Lumière
perforations. Since film feed was originally manual, its rate was irregular, resulting in unstable images during
projection. To offset this photographic defect, several techniques were used:
♦
The AFF laboratory developed a robot that would mechanically reposition the printer window in order to
solve the image stability problems.
♦
The caption stand technique was used to restore the filmstrips image by image.
♦
Two films that were partially damaged were digitally restored.
To meet the demands of the programmers, several films were also
restored using the copies from the Cinémathèque française.
Lumière N° 785 - Kiel : lancement du "Fürst-Bismarck"
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Films with universal purpose
As could be expected, the events of the 1995 Film Centenary
generated high interest early films. The Lumière films were
identified and restored to respond to this interest.
The Lumière family made them available to the general public by
entrusting their proprietary rights to the Association frères
Lumière 1 , created in October 1992, which was initially based at the
AFF.
Lumière N° 358 - Bal espagnol dans la rue
Since 1994, the Association frères Lumière has been responding to the constant flow of demand for Lumière
films for various projects by researchers, production companies, and regional or foreign archives, which used the
corpus in many different ways (research on the first attempts at cinematographic language, historical
documentaries, exhibitions, re-enactments of the first showings, etc.).
The most striking project in this regard was "Un film par jour" (one
film a day) on France 2, throughout the year 1995.
Since then, the Lumière films have been used for their
historiographic value and as an illustration of the early 20th century.
In 2004, the Lumière film corpus was included in the Unesco
Memory of the World Register, which lists the world documentary
heritage, thus recognizing the universal value of this filmography.
Lumière N° 1241 - Vue prise d'une baleinière en marche
The Lumière corpus: reflecting the values of the Lumière brothers
Beyond the peculiarity of each Lumière film, several major themes run throughout the catalogue.
Here are a few succinct and non-exhaustive courses of analysis of the Lumière corpus:
♦
Family films: like anybody today buying a video camera, the first
Lumière camera prototype served to film the immediate
surroundings of the Lumière family (exiting the Lumière factory,
baby’s dinner, baby’s first steps, family meals, concerts, games
and walks with friends).
Lumière N° 959 - Déjeuner des deux bébés et du minet
1
Contact : [email protected]
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♦
Military films: more than 700 films show the French or foreign military during ceremonies or exercises.
♦
Representations of power: multiple films show the President of France performing his duties (official
journeys outside of Paris or abroad, ceremonies, etc.), the crown heads of Europe, or foreign leaders.
♦
Travel films: the Lumière cameramen set out to represent daily
life in the countries they were visiting. This is why the
catalogue abounds with images of roads, passers-by and various
means of transportation in faraway cities.
Some cameramen, Gabriel Veyre for example, also set out to
show the customs and ways of life, trying to avoid all forms of
exotic attraction.
Lumière N° 734 - Repas en famille (Japon)
♦
Religious films: the cameraman filmed holy (Jerusalem) and symbolic (Lourdes) Catholic sites. Moreover,
the Lumière catalogue offers a "Passion of Christ" in 13 scenes and historic scenes ("Execution of Joan of
Arc").
The Lumière catalogue thus reflects the bourgeois values of the time. Relatively few films show the working or
agricultural world.
The Lumière films show a world practically without cars. When they do appear, they are the subject of the film.
Cinema was born just in time to capture a bygone era creating a different relationship with time. Ten years later,
in 1908, Albert Kahn’s cameramen showed major Parisian boulevards that were swarming with cars and buses.
This presentation of the work done by the AFF Lumière team would not be complete without mentioning the
films which were not catalogued, that is, a corpus of about six hundred films with round perforations made using
Lumière cameras, comprising shots not offered for sale, camera tests and shots taken by cameramen on their
own. They reflect the history of technology (particularly cameras), beyond the filmography of the Lumière
brothers and the vision of the world they are showing.
The Lumière team’s work was finalized when they made the films available to the public in digital format. Since
November 2006, they have been available for viewing on the Bois d'Arcy site and at the CNC office located in
the Bibliothèque nationale de France - site François Mitterrand.
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Heart-winning screening
The purpose of this selection from the Lumière corpus is to help you discover little-known shots that evidence
the cameramen’s research in the appropriation of the cinematographic language and aesthetics.
Lumière N°1215 - Cirque de Gavarnie : caravane
Lumière N°249 - Danseuses de rues
Lumière N°833 - Ouvriers réparant un trottoir en bitume
Lumière N°57 - Lancement d'un navire
Lumière N°997 - Panorama pris d'un ballon captif
Wanted: 19 films still to be found…
Once the film identifications were over, more than 96% of them had been matched with the Lumière catalogue.
Only 19 were missing, which is exceptional considering their age.
The reasons are simple: Louis and Auguste Lumière kept all of their negatives until the mid-1940s, before giving
two thirds of them to the Cinémathèque française, and distributing the rest between heirs and friends of the
family.
In the following pages, you will find the list of these 19 lost films. We found some of the photograms, shown
here, thanks to the photo boards from the Lumière factory. We hope this will encourage further discoveries.
.
Lumière n°256 - Regent Street (Londres).
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Lumière n°284 -Fin du cortège au mariage du prince de Naples.
Lumière n°285 - Piazza Colonna (Rome).
Lumière n°287 - Fontaine de Trevi (Rome) .
Lumière n°431 - Naples : une rue.
♦
Lumière n°507 (vues militaires françaises) - Dragons : sauts d'obstacles sur deux rangs
♦
Lumière n°508 (vues militaires françaises) - Dragons : sauts d'obstacles sur plusieurs rangs
Lumière n°581 - Courses de têtes (Vues militaires françaises - Ecole de
cavalerie de Saumur; Le carrousel militaire).
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Lumière n°588 - Les quatre carrés (Vues militaires françaises - Ecole de
cavalerie de Saumur; Le carrousel militaire)
♦
Lumière n°790 - Défilé d'un régiment d'infanterie (Barcelone, Espagne)
♦
Lumière n°794 - Hussards : défilé au trot (Barcelone, Espagne)
Lumière n°825 - Embarquement d'un boeuf (France : à bord du "Formidable").
Lumière n°928 - La visite du vétérinaire.
♦
Lumière n°1060 - Sortie du sanctuaire de Pompéi (Vues d'Italie - voyage de LL. MM. en Sardaigne)
♦
Lumière n°1249 - Les Alpins en ville (Les Alpins dans les Alpes)
♦
Lumière n°1300 - Embarquement de M. le Président de la République sur le "Cassini", à Dunkerque (Fêtes
franco-russes)
♦
Lumière n°1301 - Départ du "Cassini" (Fêtes franco-russes)
♦
Lumière n°1302 - Arrivée du "Standart" (Fêtes franco-russes)
♦
Lumière n°1392 - Départ de S.M. le Roi et de M. le Président de Versailles (Voyage de S. M. le roi d'Italie
Victor Emmanuel II en France en 1903)
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Credits and acknowledgments
♦
♦
♦
Text : Robert Poupard
Photos : Jim Purcell
Photograms and films : Association Frères Lumière
♦
The Archives françaises du film Lumière team:
Michelle Aubert
Jean-Louis Cot
Anne Gauthier
Robert Poupard
Jean-Marc Lamotte
Nicolas Biardeau
Nicolas Brun
Yvonne Kremer
Pierrette Lemoigne
Nathalie Leplongeon
Nathalie Morena
Jim Purcell
Jean-Luc Rigaud
Alain Sylvestre
Loïc Tesson
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le projet Lumire - Archives Françaises du Film

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