The first rushes

How very strange (and felicitous) that the word ‘lumière’ should mean light in French? For the Lumière brothers illuminated the world of cinema by creating the first motion-picture apparatus used both as a camera and a projector at the turn of the 19th century. A visit to the Lumière Museum ( >institut-lumiere.org ) in Lyon, a historic city in the shadow of the French Alps, therefore, is nothing short of a pilgrimage for a cine buff like me. I have to pinch myself to believe I am here, just across the metro station that also bears the brothers’ name, in the company of my gracious French companion and hostess, Simone.

Though the usual practice is to start the tour from the Villa, Simone suggests we take a walk in the park first, where we come upon the Inventors’ Alley. One that at every step has a plaque dedicated to pioneers, including George Eastman, Thomas Edison and Georges Méliès — inventors who led the way for Lumières’ path-breaking cinematographe. Excited (and momentarily transformed into a trigger-happy Japanese tourist), I get busy clicking each name, each plaque, until Simone gently nudges me in the direction of the Villa.

Antoine Lumière, the father of inventors Louis and Auguste, built the Villa, also called Lumière Castle by residents of Monplaisir, in 1902. Home to the Lumière Company till the late ’60s, cinematic history still thrives in its stately corridors, its grand living rooms and in the Winter Garden on the ground floor.

Part of the Lumière Quarter, the Film Warehouse — declared a historical monument since 1995 — is now home to the Lumière Institute’s cinema theatre. The first ever set for a film, it served as the backdrop for Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895). We pause awhile in the basement here, which continuously beams the films of the brothers, accompanied by commentaries, even as Simone translates them, softly.

Not all that is on display though is designed for passive consumption. A section of the museum is interactive too. I spend a considerable amount of time, for instance, fiddling with exhibits like the zoetrope, a cylindrical pre-cinema contraption with a series of pictures drawn inside it, which creates the illusion of a ‘moving image’ when rotated.

Yet, fascinating as the zoetrope is, or the 50-second films from the 1890s are, the greatest revelation for me is that the brothers Lumière invented more than just the cinematograph. Somewhere in the middle of bringing “the world to the whole world”, they found the time to make speakers and pharmaceuticals, including a dressing for burns that is still used, called ‘tulle gras’!

( Melanie P Kumar is a Bangalore-based writer )

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