Algiers seen by the Lumiere Brothers |
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Collection title
Collection EPTV
First broadcast date
01/01/1914
Abstract
Auguste and Louis Lumière are two French engineers who played a key role in the history of cinema and photography. It is often referred to them as the Lumiere Brothers.
These sequences of the streets of Algiers, dating back to 1896, are part of their first attempts of filming.
Broadcaster
EPTV - 1st national channel
Audiovisual form
Documentary
Credits / Cast
- Auguste Lumiere - Director
- Louis Lumiére - Director
Map locations
- Algeria - Centre - Algiers
Context
Algiers seen by the Lumiere Brothers
Julien Gaertner
Between the moment they first filmed in Lyon, in March 1895, to the day they filmed in Algiers the following year, the journey was extremely short. Indeed, the Lumière Brothers’ invention was exported at full speed. As from 1896, their operators, among whom was Felix Mesguich, set off round the world, from Russia to the United States. But North Africa was one of their first destinations and it is probably to Felix Mesguich that we owe these very early moving pictures of Algiers. The cameraman was born in Algeria in 1871 and became, with Alexandre Promio, one of the driving forces behind the expansion of the cinematograph.
In 1896 the first filming sessions followed by screenings were organized by Albert Samama Chickly in Alexandria, Tunis, Algiers and Oran. That same year, a cinema opened in Algiers, the first in North Africa. It was visited only by Europeans.
In these early motion pictures, audiences were invited to watch scenes from everyday life. Because when it was created the cinematograph was first and foremost a scientific instrument which could dissect movement, its purpose was seen as recording reality. These first images lacked the exoticism which soon filled cinemas back in France, thanks to the success of films like L’Atlantide (J. Feyder, 1921) or Pépé le Moko (J. Duvivier, 1937), but they showed people in France a certain reality of life in the colonies. The scenes of daily life were captured on the fly. People going into the public baths, the souk where some settlers talk to Algerian workmen, the mosque or the tram, railway and port, so many places where people live projected on the big screen and which came to life for the first time in front of an audience. However, the cameraman did not simply plonk his tripod down in the middle of a relatively indifferent crowd. He went about with it, offering wider views of the city and harbour. The tracking shots from a car or boat which Felix Mesguich offers us already sketched the beginnings of cinematic staging and storytelling.
For this scientific instrument, the cinematograph, soon became a way of creating the greatest dream factory in the modern world, especially in the North African colonies, where this kind of film would flourish and would subsequently be known as colonial cinema. The cinematograph was used scientifically for only a very short time. It became the picture house, the cinema, the flicks, first creating then showing us someone, male or female, from our imaginations, who has been with us ever since.
Bibliographie :
- Félix Mesguich, Tours de manivelle, Éditions Grasset, 1933
- Rachid Boudjedra, Naissance du cinéma algérien, Éditions Maspéro, 1971
- Mouny Berrah, Jacques Lévy, Claude-Michel Cluny (dir.), Les cinémas arabes, Cinémaction, Éditions du Cerf/Institut du monde arabe, n° 43, Paris, 1987
