Lumière et compagnie

I was barely 5 years old when I first went to see a movie. It was about one year before I moved to Istanbul with my family; we were living in a coastal town, Sinop, and the movie was E.T. I can not remember what the movie theater was like and when I go to Sinop today, I can not even recall where it was located. One of my older brothers took me to see it, and the one thing I do remember is that I could not talk for about an hour after we came out; I was in a complete shock, not because of the little creature called E.T. but because I met one of the most fascinating inventions of the human kind, the wide motion picture screen - huge for me at that age. That was the exact moment I fell in love with cinema.

On December 28, 1895, in Paris, the Lumière Brothers made a demonstration to an audience, projecting a series of moving images on a screen, changing the perception and history of entertainment forever. That day is marked in history as the birth of cinema; people were already aware of the invention for some time, mostly thanks to Edison's kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device, though not a projector; however, the images taken were to be viewed individually through a window in the device. The films that the Lumière Brothers showed that day were short ones, each barely one minute, and they were mostly the Brothers' experimental actuality films, however one would especially attract attention for it clearly shows the advanced understanding of perspective and cinematography of Louis Lumière, making it the iconic image of cinema. L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat shows a steam train arriving at a station and moving towards the camera; another thing that makes it an icon is the urban legend that the audience panicked and tried to run away, thinking that it was a real locomotive appearing on screen. Even as only a legend, this reveals what a fascinating effect cinema had on modern society.

L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat

Exactly one hundred years after that very first day, 40 filmmakers got together to celebrate the invention of cinema, in a project that was both a memorial and a challenge. These most celebrated international filmmakers were to use the original cinématographe to shoot one short film each, within three rules, as;

#1 A short may be no longer than 52 seconds
#2 No synchronized sound (some of them used music in the background while a few dubbed in various sounds, many were silent movies)
#3 No more than three takes (these all were clearly the conditions that the filmmakers faced with in those days)


Lumière et compagnie is an absolute hall of fame; the directors include Costa-Gavras, Michael Haneke, David Lynch, Claude Lelouch, Abbas Kiarostami... They are all amazed by the little box and quite shocked at first, this is clearly seen in the scenes shot in between the shorts; scenes showing them playing with the boite and then directing, while one person counts the 52 seconds aloud. The movie attempts to use the original device of the Lumière Brothers to celebrate this invention, yet it also dives into the inner worlds of those most influential directors of today, to reveal how far this invention has come through, becoming the seventh art, by the questions;

- Why did you accept to make this movie?
- Why do you make films?
- Cinema; do you think it is mortal?

and the replies are all notable memoirs. I believe the most unforgettable reply to the second question is that of Haneke's; Never ask a centipede why it walks or it'll stumble; it is the one thing that helps them breath, live, love, to be loved and not to die, they just can't help it.


Is the cinema mortal? I do not want to think it is. It would mean the death of mankind, no more stories, no more memories. My love relationship with cinema has been broken off and mended from time to time since E.T.; however, the more I got inside that world the deeper my affection has grown, and I know now that I can never leave it again, nor will I ever allow it to leave me. One more hail to Frères Lumière, from me.