Lumière and Company

This video was given to me by a friend who knows that I look at film not merely as entertainment, but art as well. This project with its 40-odd 50 second vignettes done by a mix of directors of varying talents and celebrity, using an antiquated camera, gives an opportunity to see snapshots of their work as pure art. All of them are at least passable, with over half being very, very good. A few of them are truly outstanding, the most notable being Andre Konchalovsky's gem on life, death, temporality and nature. David Lynch's segment is a close second. I highly recommend this to any serious student of film as art.

This film was made to celebrate one-hundred years of the first camera used by the Lumiere Brothers. Forty directors from around the world were asked to make a short film with the original camera. The rules being it lasts no longer than fifty-two seconds, only three takes allowed, and no synchronous sound. The directors are predominately French, with a few notable exceptions like David Lynch, Peter Greenaway and John Boorman. Lynch's segment is far and away the most creative and satisfactory effort. Most of the others are mainly static and ordinary. But it's a fascinating documentary with insights and comments from the all the directors, and worth seeing for Lynch's film alone. That was the prime reason I watched it.

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).

In making this documentary, what its makers wind up unveiling is how many of them have no ideas whatsoever. Almost all the attempts with the Lumiere camera involve just placing a lot of people in front of the camera and have them wave and/or stare, or they involve films about filmmakers. Other attempts are to recreate the banal films which were made in the era of first attempts in the history of cinema. And then you have clips that you can see that the director didn't take the project seriously at all, as in the cases of Spike Lee and John Boorman. Then you get laughably bad films made by pretentious idiots, such as the one by Peter Greenaway (who concludes that film is dying) and the one by the Japanese twit who says that film doesn't capture anything.

On the plus side, you get some interesting films along the way, particularly among the last few, like the one by David Lynch, among others.

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!!!