Lumière and Company

1995. The 100 year anniversary of the Lumiere Brothers first motion picture. What better way to celebrate this historical event than to gather 40 directors from around the world for a little game. The game? Each director is given access to the original Lumiere motion picture camera and about one minute of film time. Just the idea of these directors, who are used to making two hour films, throwing all their creativity into one minute is worth seeing. The rest is cinematic history. The directors are also asked to comment on why they film and if they think cinema is mortal or not. It would have helped though if they gave each director's film credits because half of them I never even heard of. This documentary gives us film in its purest art form. It's a must for film students and film lovers alike. Some of the best ones I would recommend to check out are John Boorman's, Peter Greenaway's, and of course, David Lynch's. I would have liked to see more American directors showcased like Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, or Francis Ford Coppola. But all in all, it is an engrossing, thoroughly amazing little slice of history. SEE IT!!!

I think this was a great idea. It works three fold: as a fun game, a slice of world cinema, and ultimately as a celebration of cinema. You get to see some more well known directors while some lesser known though not necessarily less important ones get exposure. I agree that David Lynch's film is probably the standout of the lot for its creativity within 50 seconds and the other rules of the game. But there are also many other interesting things going on throughout the whole exercise;weather the film is particularly entertaining or more personal, the whole project remains interesting. Other films I personally found memorable included the ones by Greenaway (also very creative, particularly his use of light), Zhang Yi Mou (sleight of hand with no special effects), Idrissa Ouedraogo and Gaston Kabore from Burkina Faso, Egypt's Youseff Chahine, to mention a few. Finally, after reading the other comments I wanted to say, instead of complaining that most of these directors showed no creativity why not think about and discuss what you yourself might film if given the chance.

Lumière et Compagnie is a very interesting documentary, giving the audience different perspectives on the meaning of cinema within the concept of its birth a century ago. Heavily centered on directors from France and other countries with strong historical or linguistic bonds to France (Romania, Algeria, Burkina Faso etc.), the movie nevertheless tries to adopt a universal discourse on cinema through evaluating it as a global language of art. Among the movies of the 40 directors and a couple of Lumière examples shown in the film there are certain approaches and themes I find interesting and very much related to the questions asked to the participant directors about the meaning of cinema and its future. Peter Greenaway's segment with the passing calendar years starting from the symbolic date of 1895 with a constant sitting naked man was in that sense very much reminding me the novelty of cinema when compared to the life of humanity and civilization, just like the 52 seconds passing in the life of that man, who is young and promising. The parts combining the whole film together with interviews and shots showing the audience how these individual movies were made was also a theme itself in the movies of Sanders-Brahms, Chahine, Lelouch and Axel, all emphasizing on the making of the movie more than the movie itself as Lumière et Compagnie was about. The concept of realizing the presence of a camera and trying to be on the screen was elaborately used by Booman and Allouache, whereby the latter strikingly combined it with his country's patriarchal social structure. I really enjoy Costa-Gavras' segment, which delicately reminds me of my status of audience after 50 seconds of eye contact with the audience on the screen, for which cinema is produced at the end of the day. Haneke is again outstanding with filming an already prepared television shot, maybe challenging the three rules of the game in an original fashion but I prefer such rule violations when done more sincerely like in the case of Ouedraogo when he was caught by the camera saying "in Burkina Faso we can make four takes with the soldiers". Most of the directors are optimistic and even emotional when commenting on cinema and its future, but somehow many of them sound to me as clichés; maybe they are not so good in speech that's why they chose to make movies. However I think the strongest statement was uttered by Yoshida that cinema cannot capture every moment and the director shooting his movie at the real time of the nuclear bomb attack would be dead. Very reminiscent of Chacun Son Cinéma (2007) prepared for the Cannes Film Festival by 33 directors, it is always fun to watch samples from great directors and the use of the so-called first movie camera as the basic concept is a very challenging and as much as a successful idea.

The film would be inherently fascinating even if it were no good, but there's actually a lot here of genuine interest. The repeated questions about why the directors make cinema and whether it's "mortal" receive predictably lame responses, but the glimpses of them at work, punctuated with their 50 second films, is mesmerizing. Many of them turn the project into a commentary on cinema in some form - Boorman films Neil Jordan at work, with the actors looking quizzically into the camera (a common device here, also used by Angelopoulos and Costa-Gavras); Lelouch has a sort of reverse version of the Vertigo kiss, designed with great panache. in which a historic parade of cameras observes the spiraling lovers; some, like Rivette, just take varied people and let them play (he's very engaging, seen protesting that the film is too short). Lynch's segment is magnificently skillful and striking, with a potted narrative of police, a 50's style family, and a bunch of space aliens holding a captive woman - it's almost as effective as the whole of Lost Highway and utterly distinctive. In all, it's a tumbling parade of cinematic images that evokes love, passion and breadth, whether the directors take a playful approach (a majority) or aim for greater seriousness (as in Handke's filming of a potted TV news bulletin).

This DVD is a collection of the interesting, although scattered, results of an inspired project. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Lumiere Brothers' first motion picture, 40 directors from around the world are each allowed to shoot a short film using their original hand-cranked model. The participants have to follow three rules: 1. The film is 52 seconds. 2. No synchronous sound (most use musical scoring or dub in foley sound, and many are silent) and 3. They have to get it within three takes. Unfortunately for the viewer, several of the filmmakers opt to merely capture trite snapshots of everyday life. While this keeps in tradition with the Lumiere Brothers' original films, which wowed audiences unfamiliar with moving images a century ago, it makes for a pretty unremarkable experience today. Patrice Leconte pays tribute to their film of a train arriving in La Ciotat, France in 1895 by documenting the arrival of a modern day streamliner at the same location. Alain Corneau applies the technique of color tints to footage of a dancer twirling about. Some of them set up elaborate sequences (Gabriel Axel, Jerry Schatzberg, Peter Greenaway), some are intentionally minimal (Wim Wenders, Regis Wargnier, Andrei Konchalovsky) or simple and symbolic (Arthur Penn, Abbas Kiarostami, Francis Girod, Cedric Klapisch) and a large number turn the camera on itself (Liv Ullmann, John Boorman, Claude Lelouch, Gaston Kabore, Youseel Chahine, Helma Sanders). David Lynch is one of the few directors who rises to the challenge with an exceptionally creative effort, and his is easily the most impressive of the bunch. I'm sure it was an honor for them to be approached for the project, but the entries of Spike Lee, Nadine Trintignant, Lasse Hallstrom, and Merchant Ivory are quite unimaginative and forgettable. The menu screen lists the directors alphabetically, allowing you to jump directly to your favorite ones. Each short is designated by a chapter stop, accompanied by brief behind-the-scenes moments and interviews in which the directors awkwardly answer questions such as "Why do you film?" and "Is cinema mortal?" These unsuccessful attempts at insight are best summed up by Michael Haneke's reply: "Never ask a centipede why it walks or it'll stumble." As a tribute to film history, it's a novel and occasionally successful idea, but much of the work is too inconsistent to earn repeat viewings.