Auguste and Louis Lumière
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| The Lumière Brothers Les frères Lumière |
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 Auguste Lumière (left) and Louis Lumière (right) |
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| Place of birth | Besançon, France |
| Auguste | Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière October 19, 1862 |
| Louis | Louis Jean Lumière October 5, 1864 |
| Occupation | Filmmakers |
| Education | La Martiniere Lyon |
| Parents | Charles Antoine Lumière (1840-1911) |
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besançon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besançon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol[1] [2]), were among the earliest filmmakers. (Appropriately, "lumière" translates as "light" in English.)
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[edit] Early cinema
The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures March 22, 1895.[3] Their first public screening of movies at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).[4] Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 46 seconds.
It is believed their first film was actually recorded that same year (1895)[5] with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device, which was patented the previous year. The cinématographe— a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures— was further developed by the Lumières.
Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioskope, had offered projected moving images to a paying public one month earlier (November 1, 1895, in Berlin). Neverless, film historians consider the Grand Café screening to be the true birth of the cinema as a commercial medium, because the Skladanowsky brothers' screening used an extremely impractical dual system motion picture projector that was immediately supplanted by the Lumiere cinematographe.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Louis Lumière, 83, A Screen Pioneer. Credited in France With The Invention of Motion Picture.", New York Times, 7 June 1948. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
- ^ "Died.", Time (magazine), 14 June 1948. Retrieved on 2008-04-29. "Louis Lumière, 83, wealthy motion-picture and color-photography pioneer, whom (with his brother Auguste) Europeans generally credit with inventing the cinema; of a heart ailment; in Bandol, France."
- ^ Chardère (1985), p.71. This first screening on March 22 1895 took place in Paris, at the "Society for the Development of the National Industry", in front of an audience of 200 people - among which Léon Gaumont, then director of the Comptoir de la photographie. The main focus of this conference by Louis Lumière were the recent developments in the photograph industry, mainly the research on polychromy (color photography). It was much to Lumière's surprise that the moving black-and-white images retained more attention than the colored stills photographs.
- ^ "La première séance publique payante", Institut Lumière, http://www.institut-lumiere.org/francais/films/1seance/accueil.html .
- ^ Chardère (1985), p.70: The date of the recording of their first film is in dispute. In an interview with Georges Sadoul given in 1948, Louis Lumière tells that he shot the film in August 1894. This is questioned by historians (Sadoul, Pinel, Chardère) who consider that a functional Lumière camera didn't exist before the end of 1894, and that their first film was recorded March 19th 1895, and then publicly projected March 22nd at the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale in Paris.
[edit] Further reading
- Chardère, B.; Borgé, G. and M. (1985). Les Lumière, Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts. ISBN 2-85047-068-6 (Language: French)
- Chardère, B. (1995). Les images des Lumière, Paris: Gallimard. ISBN 2-07-011462-7 (Language: French)
- Cook, David (2004). A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed., New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97868-0.
- Rittaud-Hutinet, Jacques. (1985). Le cinéma des origines, Seyssel: Champ Vallon. ISBN 2-903528-43-8 (Language: French)
- Mast, Gerald; and Bruce F. Kawin (2006). A Short History of the Movies, 9th ed., New York: Pearson Longman. ISBN 0-321-26232-8.
[edit] External links
- Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale
- Louis Lumière at Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
- Auguste Lumière at Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
- The films shown at the first public screening (Quicktime format) — December 28, 1895. Also includes a program for the event.
- Le musée Lumière — Lumière Museum .
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