Lumière and Company (original title: Lumière et compagnie) is a 1995 anthology film made in collaboration between forty-one international film directors. The project consists of short films made by each of the filmmakers using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers.[1][2]
The shorts were edited in-camera and constrained by three rules:[3]
- A short may be no longer than 52 seconds
- No synchronized sound
- No more than three takes
Directors
edit- Merzak Allouache
- Gabriel Axel
- Vicente Aranda
- Theo Angelopoulos
- Bigas Luna
- John Boorman
- Youssef Chahine
- Alain Corneau
- Costa-Gavras
- Raymond Depardon
- Francis Girod
- Peter Greenaway
- Lasse Hallström (starring Lena Olin)
- Michael Haneke
- Hugh Hudson
- Gaston Kaboré
- Abbas Kiarostami
- Cédric Klapisch
- Andrei Konchalovsky
- Patrice Leconte
- Spike Lee
- Claude Lelouch
- David Lynch
- Merchant & Ivory (music by Richard Robbins)
- Claude Miller
- Sarah Moon
- Idrissa Ouedraogo
- Arthur Penn
- Lucian Pintilie
- Jacques Rivette (starring Nathalie Richard)
- Helma Sanders-Brahms
- Jerry Schatzberg
- Nadine Trintignant
- Fernando Trueba
- Liv Ullmann (starring Sven Nykvist)
- Jaco Van Dormael (starring Pascal Duquenne)
- Régis Wargnier
- Wim Wenders
- Yoshishige Yoshida
- Zhang Yimou
Summary
edit- Patrice Leconte: A recreation of L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat 100 years later at the same station.
- Gabriel Axel: The evolution of the arts is shown, culminating in cinema. Then, two men shoot each other in a duel.
- Claude Miller: A girl is repeatedly pushed off a scale by others, before a man picks her up and puts her on his shoulders before getting on the scale.
- Jacques Rivette: A girl plays hopscotch while a woman roller-skates. The roller-skating woman collides with a man reading a newspaper.
- Michael Haneke: Various shots of TV news on March 19, 1995, exactly 100 years after the filming of L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat.
- Fernando Trueba: Felix Romero, A conscientious objector who has refused to partake in Spanish military service, departs from a prison in Zaragoza.
- Merzak Allouache: A couple walk through a park and notice the camera. They both examine it before the man shoves the woman out of the way.
- Raymond Depardon: Children use a ladder to put a hat on top of a large statue.
- Wim Wenders: Two men examine a cityscape.
- Jaco Van Dormael: A smiling couple kiss.
- Nadine Trintignant: Tourists wander around the courtyard of the Louvre.
- Régis Wargnier: A man in a park walks toward the camera. Voiceover recollects a scene from a film.
- Hugh Hudson: Japanese schoolchildren in Hiroshima visit a monument. Audio from news reports of the bombing of Hiroshima plays.
- Zhang Yimou: A man plays a traditional Chinese bowed musical instrument while a woman dances. They switch from their traditional clothing to punk fashion and the man plays a guitar while the woman thrashes her head.
- Liv Ullmann: Cinematographer Sven Nykvist operates his camera.
- Vicente Aranda: A victory parade drives through the street.
- Lucian Pintilie: People climb into a helicopter. The helicopter lifts off.
- John Boorman: Behind-the-scenes of the filming of Michael Collins.
- Claude Lelouch: A couple embraces as various camera crews move around them.
- Abbas Kiarostami: An egg fries on a skillet. A voicemail plays.
- Lasse Hallström: A woman with a baby waves at a passing train.
- Costa-Gavras: Various young adults gather around to look at the camera.
- Yoshishige Yoshida: Alternates between a shot of Yoshida with the camera and a destroyed building in Hiroshima while the sound of an explosion is heard.
- Idrissa Ouedraogo: A man goes for a swim in a river before being scared off by another man wearing a mask.
- Gaston Kaboré: Outside of a cinema, a group of friends with a camera discover a truck full of filmstrips.
- Youssef Chahine: Two men film the Pyramids of Giza. Another man runs up the them and destroys their camera before storming off.
- Helma Sanders-Brahms: A tribute to Louis Cochet - a man directs lighting equipment next to a waterfall.
- Francis Girod: A large image of a television displaying a director in his chair is painted over with white paint.
- Cédric Klapisch: A man and a woman attempt to act out a scene where they embrace.
- Alain Corneau: A woman dances as her clothes rapidly change colors.
- Merchant & Ivory: People wander the city streets of Paris.
- Jerry Schatzberg: A garbage worker puts trash in the back of his truck. A woman gets into an argument with him when she doesn't want to give up her trash.
- Spike Lee: Footage of his newly-born daughter, Satchel Lee.
- Andrei Konchalovsky: In a natural landscape, the carcass of an animal slowly decays.
- Peter Greenaway: Various images, including the Lumière brothers, various years, a nude man sitting in a chair
- Bigas Luna: A nude woman sitting in a field nurses a baby.
- Arthur Penn: A man tied to a bed screams out. In the bunk above him is a pregnant woman.
- David Lynch: Police discover a murder victim and inform the family.
- Theo Angelopoulos: Homer wakes up on a rocky seashore. In his attempts to figure out where he is, he stares down the camera.
References
edit- ^ Wheeler W. Dixon (28 February 2000). The Second Century of Cinema: The Past and Future of the Moving Image. SUNY Press. pp. 98–. ISBN 978-0-7914-4516-7.
- ^ Negar Mottahedeh (24 October 2008). Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema. Duke University Press. pp. 109–. ISBN 978-0-8223-8119-8.
- ^ Cynthia Fuchs (2002). Spike Lee: Interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. pp. 26–. ISBN 978-1-57806-470-0.