Le débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon

Louis Lumiere was a businessman. Since he was in the photographic business (his families factory in Lyon, France produced what many considered to be the best treated glass plates used in photography at that time - the mid 1890s), he was also a photographer. But, I am sure, he considered himself first-and-foremost a scientist. He considered his new invention, the Cinematopgraph, to be a scientific instrument. That is why during 1894 and 1895, he spent quite a bit of effort to gain approbation from various scientific groups. He wanted to keep the photographic community, in which he was well known, appraised of his endeavors. One method of doing this was to attend, in June 1895, a congress of photographers that was gathering at Neuville-Sur-Soane - a town just a short distance north of Lyon.

Louis positioned his camera at the base of a gangplank down which delegates to the conference descended from a Soane river ferry. Certainly, all of the descending men and women knew, by that time, of Louis' invention - although it had not yet been made public. Later that evening the Lumiere brothers showed the congress attendees eight of their less-than-one-minute films. And in one of these films the members saw themselves descending from the boat.

This interesting footage is particularly worth seeing as a companion piece to, and as a comparison with, the Lumière classic, "La Sortie des usines Lumière". The two features have much in common, and they are interesting for many of the same reasons.

In both movies, there is a rather sizable crowd moving towards the camera, knowing that they are being filmed. The main difference is that this movie features professional photographers, as they arrive to attend a congress of a photographic society. Their reactions are largely the same as were those of the factory workers, but many of the "professionals" seem more determined to hide their curiosity. On the other hand, a number of them show their interest even more eagerly, tipping their hats in a particularly jaunty fashion, demonstrating a bit of showmanship of their own.

As with the footage of the factory workers, the motion towards the camera is effective, and here the background scenery also has some interesting details. This film is also self-referential in one interesting respect, since the subjects of the film were also its initial audience. It's all rather interesting to take in.

To many historians, December 28, 1895, is the date considered as the day where cinema was born, as it was in that cold day of winter when the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière gave the first public screening of their new invention, the Cinématographe. The brothers' devise would change history of entertainment forever, as it took the idea of motion pictures from the uncomfortable and individual experience of Edison's Kinetoscope, to the more enjoyable atmosphere of a movie projected on a screen. On that day the brothers showed 10 films, and the majority of them were of the kind that later would be known as "actuality films", movies showing an everyday event. However, one of the 10 films was a bit more than a typical "actuality film", as it was actually the register of an event in a fashion more akin to what we know now as documentary films: it was the arrival of the Photographical Congress to Lyon.

While December 28, 1895, was certainly the very first time the brothers showed their invention to the world, it wasn't really the first time the brothers' invention was shown to an audience, as months earlier, the brothers had been doing private screenings for the scientific community of France. The 1895 Photographical Congress that was celebrated at the community of Neuville-sur-Saône in Lyon, was one of the places where the Lumières screened their films for the first time. "Neuville-sur-Saône: Débarquement du congrès des photographes à Lyon", is essentially the recording of the arrival of the members of the Photographical Congress to Neuville-sur-Saône, marking the first time a camera was used to capture something more "special" than people moving or trains arriving. This time the new medium was being used to actually register the event in real time, pretty much in the same way as TV News work today.

Nevertheless, that was not the only thing that "Neuville-sur-Saône" an interesting early short film. The movie was shot when the Congress arrived, early in the morning, and that very same day was shown to its protagonists in the afternoon. One has to wonder how the photographers felt when they saw the images of their arrival actually moving, as if the even was being enacted again. The very same people that looked into the camera (perhaps thinking it was a normal photography) was now watching themselves in a motion picture depicting short seconds of their lives. It was certainly a unique experience, and no doubt the success of "Neuville-sur-Saône: Débarquement du congrès des photographes à Lyon" and their other films that day prompted the brothers to keep working in their preparation for that December day, when the world witnessed what a group of photographers did (and saw) months ago. 7/10

This film is a virtual remake of 'Sortie d'Usine', perhaps making it the first self-referential movie. Instead of the workers streaming out of the factory, we have fellow cinematograph specialists disembarking a liner for a congress. Instead of workers silently doing their masters' bidding, we have colleagues, friends, peers, fearlessly greeting the camera as equals.

This is a film about film - the Congressionists walk with their cameras; this film was precessed immediately for viewing at the conference. Already, the Lumieres' desire to 'objectively' record the world has turned into a naval-gazing admission of defeat, of the impossibility of objectivity untainted by subjectivity or ideology. Godard once suggested that the most honest film would be of a camera recording itself in a mirror. This film is an early grasping of what he means.

From a boat descend the photographers who must participate in the congress of Lyone dividing in two diagonals to the right and left. After, someone greets the film operator. So the illusion of the dimension of the cinema is broken.