Movements and schools
Early French silent cinema
The very beginnings of film, from the Lumière actuality to the fantastical serial.
On 22 March 1895 workers leave a factory in Lyon and cinema exists. Two years later a stage illusionist discovers that the camera can be stopped and one object replaced by another: Méliès then manufactures voyages to the moon and trick shots in a painted studio. Alice Guy, a secretary at Gaumont, was shooting fiction from 1896 onwards and became the first woman director. Feuillade launched the crime serial that held Paris in suspense, Perret told of a little girl lost in the city.
works 5
- CinemaWorkers Leaving the Lumière FactoryLa Sortie de l'usine LumièreLouis Lumière · 1895The staff of the Lumière family factory, filmed as they leave work by the inventor of the cinematograph.Cinema
- CinemaThe Cabbage Patch FairyLa Fée aux chouxAlice Guy · 1900A fairy picks newborns from a vegetable patch, in a minute of early cinema.Cinema
- CinemaA Trip to the MoonLe Voyage dans la LuneGeorges Méliès · 1902Scientists set off for the Moon in a shell fired from a cannon and meet its strange inhabitants there.Cinema
- CinemaThe Child of ParisL'Enfant de ParisLéonce Perret · 1913A little girl kidnapped by gangsters and an apprentice who follows her from Paris to the Mediterranean.Cinema
- CinemaLes VampiresLouis Feuillade · 1915Over ten episodes, a reporter tracks a Parisian gang in which an elusive woman operates.Cinema