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Lumière et compagnie(1995)
Starring Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Stephen Rea, and Aidan Quinn. Cinematography by Didier Ferry, Frédéric LeClair, Sarah Moon, and Philippe Poulet. Edited by Roger Ikhelf and Timothy Miller. Produced by Neal Edelstein and Fabienne Servan-Schreiber. Directed by Theo Angelopoulos, Vicente Aranda, Bigas Luna, John Boorman, Youssef Chahine, Alain Corneau, Costa-Gavras, Raymond Depardon, Francis Girod, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallström, Hugh Hudson, Gaston Kaboré, Abbas Kiarostami, Cédric Klapisch, Andrei Konchalovsky, Spike Lee, Claude Lelouch, Sarah Moon, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Arthur Penn, Lucian Pintilie, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Jerry Schatzbert, Nadine Trintignant, Fernando Trueba, Liv Ullmann, Régis Wargnier, Wim Wenders, Kiju Yoshida, Yimou Zhang, Jaco van Dormael, Merzak Allouache, Gabriel Axel, Michael Haneki, James Ivory, Patrice Leconte, David Lynch, Ismail Merchant, Claude Miller, and Jacques Rivette.
On December 28th, 1895, Louis and Auguste Lumière presented the very first motion picture exhibition. On this historic evening the Lumière brothers would display ten of their single reel films to a paying audience. The most famous of these short films would be “L' Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat” (“Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat”) which simply featured a train arriving at its station. Legend has it that when the audience first saw this clip, many of them went running in effort to dodge what they thought was an oncoming engine. One hundred years later Philippe Poulet of the Museum of Cinema in Lyon, France would invite forty of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world to use the original Lumière camera to create their own short film project. Poulet had restored the their Cinématograph back into working condition and challenged the modern directors to stretch their creative abilities by limiting themselves to using only the technology available in the late nineteenth century. The experiment would be called Lumière et compagnie (Lumière and Company).
The rules of the project were as follows… Rule one: each film could not exceed fifty two seconds in length. This was the maximum amount of footage that that the Cinématograph could hold. Rule two: the film’s can not be shot with artificial light or synchronized sound as these techniques had yet to be invented. Rule three: the shot had to be achieved in three takes. The high price of film at the time would have prevented any more.
There are those on the Lumière and Company project who truly seemed to appreciate this once in a lifetime opportunity and made the most out of it. James Ivory and Ismail Merchant take the camera for a dolly ride in a picturesque nineteenth century street scene, only to end their shot with a taste of irony at McDonalds. John Boorman captures the action behind the scenes at Neil Jordan’s film Michael Collins.
Yimou Zhang demonstrates his country’s changing culture atop the Great Wall of China. Claude Lelouch rotates a couple in a romantic embrace as they are captured from cameras throughout history. Peter Greenaway’s part is visually strong but slightly ambiguous as the years float by a naked man. Alain Corneau adds color to his piece by tinting the film. But without question the most ambitious and memorable short picture in the film comes from the amazing mind of David Lynch.
He starts with a shot of police approaching the body of a dead boy. Then we see a woman waiting in her living room. Next he shows us three women in who seem to be distracted by something behind the camera. Suddenly the shot pans to three mutated figures that have surrounded a nude woman contained in a glass tank full of water. The shot literally burns away to reveal the waiting woman receiving the bad news from the police. Fans of Lynch’s work that have seen the film solely based on his participation are not disappointed as he completely steals the show.
Budget: $???
Total US Gross: $???
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 88 Minutes
US Release Date: 3/29/96
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Awards: none
Tagline: Intriguing Short Films From 40 Of The World’s Leading Directors.
Quote: “I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream; allows you to dream in the dark. It's just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.”
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