Short film
The Weavers
Οι υφάντρες
Manaki Brothers · 1905
Synopsis
In the Aromanian village of Avdella, the grandmother of the two cameramen, Despina, a hundred and fourteen years old, spins wool at the spinning wheel while the aunts of the family card and weave. The film lasts some sixty silent seconds: the hands at work, the spinning wheel, the loom, and the women of one household gathered in the same task.
Context
The film lasts one minute. It was shot in Avdella with a thirty-five millimetre Urban Bioscope camera, bearing serial number three hundred, which the elder of the two brothers had bought in London from Charles Urban the same year, on a journey through Paris and Vienna. Its original title announced the subject without detour: our hundred-and-fourteen-year-old grandmother at work. An extract opens a feature film by Theo Angelopoulos, and the Bitola festival that bears the two brothers' name opens each year with these images.
Who it is for
One silent minute, in black and white. Nothing to know in advance, except that the gestures seen in it had never been recorded.
Prizes and reception
The first moving image shot in the Balkans, and the woman it shows, born in 1791, is reputed to be the earliest-born person of whom images exist.