Où le cinéma est née

Date Published: Today

Où le cinéma est née

Lyon, 1894. The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière devise the cinematograph.
One year later that very same invention was used to screen a series of their films. And the world has never been quite the same.
Shown on 28 December 1895 at the Grand Café in Paris, the brothers' captivating short productions, such as 'La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon', not only revolutionized visual art in France, they also changed the world.
For the Lumière brothers did not merely invent a new form of art. Rather, with 33 ticket-paying spectators in attendance for the Cinematographie Lumière at the Grand Café that day, the technological production of 'moving pictures' and the tradition of theatrical performance intersected for the first time, and thus the practice of cinema-going as we know it came to be.
Cinema was then, and remains now--despite the privatizing effects of Netflix and other streaming platforms--a profoundly social experience, a kind of shared voyage of infinite possibilities.
Indeed, to borrow a phrase from Henri Langois, even today the cinema screens of Paris, Hollywood, Mumbai, and Tokyo 'ouvraient une fenêtre sur l'infini'.
Interested in learning more about les frères Lumière? La Musée Lumière pays homage to them and at the same time continues the rich tradition of film in France. Housed in the charming villa Lumière in Lyon, the museum offers visitors a unique opportunity to view a wide variety of objects, including the first cinematograph and many other technical devices, and to delve into the history and culture of cinema. 
Vive le cinéma!