On this day, in 1895, at 44 Rue de Rennes in Paris, the Lumière Brothers screened 'Workers leaving the Lumière factory' - the first piece of cinema!
I think it is apt for us to look back at the inception of cinema, as we know it now, as the entire world has been focusing a lot of recent cinematic attention on 'The Artist' and 'Hugo' - both excellent movies on their own.
I had earlier mentioned 'The Artist', in listing my Oscar favorites for the year, it celebrates silent cinema and opens the eyes of the new-age film enthusiasts to this very genre from the past. I have written about my being charmed by 'Hugo' in an exclusive piece too. Recently, I read somewhere that 'Hugo' is Martin Scorsese’s cinematic love letter to Georges Méliès, the famous French illusionist and filmmaker. I loved the befitting tag.
We often neglect history. It's a shame. We must never fail to honour our illustrious past. The Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, could not possibly fathom the ramifications of the cinematic explosion that was destined to happen, and their first screening - or rather the series of screenings which began - was not even meant for the general public (the first public screening was to take place in December that year, at the Grand Cafe on Boulevard de Capuchines, Paris), but history was made with the exposure to the filming and film viewing experience.
Movies have come a long way. Yet, they are still marvelled at. They still fill us with awe, admiration and amazement. The best of the films inspire us, educate us, enlighten us. And moving images or moving images are best interpreted, universally, as movies; they move us, emotionally. They affect us. They affect social changes even.
However, movies are now not just watched, they are consumed!
Movie-making has undergone a sea-change, or rather witnessed waves of changes, waves of revolution, one after the other. Cinema is one of the most dynamic art forms. Cinematic brilliance is honored and revered like never before.
The skeptics have foreseen death of cinema; well, it is yet to happen and is hardly foreseeable in the near future, although evolution has been the order of the day, it is the key to sustenance and survival after all.
2 comments:
An eye-opener of a post! Impressive!
Gone are the days of good old single screen cinema-houses, movies are watched in multiplexes, in one's own bedroom, on one's laptop and even shared via ipods and mobiles. Yet, movies keep getting talked about, written about, they keep influencing us, and inspiring us as well, and are thus very much alive.
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