Dubai film fest: Cannes chief Fremaux to present restored Lumiere works

  • Gautaman Bhaskaran, Hindustan Times, Chennai
  • Updated: Nov 11, 2016 14:14 IST
Restored movies made by Lumiere brothers will be screened at the Dubai Film Festival. A still from Entrée du Cinématographe. (Dubai Film Festival)

There will be a double whammy at the forthcoming Dubai International Film Festival this December. A 4K compilation of restored movies which the French cinema pioneers, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, made between 1895 and 1905 will be presented at the festival by the Cannes supremo, Thierry Fremaux.

Fremaux wears two hats -- as the chief of the world’s premiere film festival at Cannes and as the head of the Institut Lumiere at Lyon. He said in a note that “the showcase enables us to rediscover and celebrate Auguste and Louis Lumiere, moviemakers who are responsible for film as we know it, whose pioneering moving image snapshots of life at the end of the 19th century (and the start of the 20th century) paved the way for the popularisation of the medium and its evolution into an art form.”

The Lumiere movies have been produced by Bertrand Tavernier (President of the Institut) and Fremaux -- and whose visit to Dubai will be his first to the region.

Titled ‘Lumiere! Inventing Cinema’, will be screened on December 8, a day after the festival begins. This outstanding package will have 98 films, all restored and conserved.

A still from Les Pyramides. (Dubai Film Festival)

In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers invented the Cinematograph (a device for capturing, developing and projecting movies) and went on to film some of the first moving images in the history of cinema. Some of them show factory workers emerging from work, a steam engine and people scaling a snow-covered mountain. Some of these are celebrated masterpieces, others lesser known gems. They give us a glimpse of France and the world as they looked once upon a time.

A scene from Chamonis la Mer de Glace. (Dubai Film Festival)

The Brothers’ house in Lyon (France) is now a beautifully preserved museum. India too had its movie pioneers like Dadasaheb Phalke and Hiralal Sen among others. There are no memorials or museums for them, if one is right. A proper museum for the legendary Satyajit Ray (who actually introduced India cinema to the world on the Cannes platform) is still being talked about -- although a part of his house in Kolkata is now being seen as a memorial to the master.

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