Lumière and Beyond: A Program of Shorts, playing at Cornell Cinema

In advance of the live performance, Bring on the Lumière!, a dance-theater-light installation/performance by choreographer Catherine Galasso '06, taking place Friday, February 10 @ 7:30 pm in the Schwartz Center, we present not only some of the French founding fathers of cinema's short actualities, but also a collection of more recent films inspired by the Lumières. Thanks to Steve Polta and the San Francisco Cinematheque. Cosponsored with the Cornell Council for the Arts.

Lumière Compilation Reel
attributed to Auguste and Louise Lumière;
16mm, b&w, silent w/musical soundtrack, 20 minutes
Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 (1990)
by Ken Jacobs
16mm, b&w and color, silent, 9 minutes; 3-D utilizing Pulfrich Effect
3-D Instructions To Viewer: Start by holding the Pulfrich filter over your right eye. [Handle filter by edges to preserve clarity. Either side of filter may face the screen. Filter can be held at any angle, there's no "up" or "down" side.] Passing through the tunnel mid-film, switch your single Pulfrich filter from before your right eye to before your left (keep both eyes open). Center-seating is best: depth deepens viewing further from the screen.
Please return the filter to the usher at the end of the show.
After Lumière—L'Arroseur Arrosé (1974)
by Malcolm Le Grice
16mm, color, sound, 14 minutes
"Like all the works I have done which refer directly to another artist, After Lumière… is not directly 'about' the Lumière original. It is the starting point for an investigation. In this case it is an investigation into consequentiality, or at least the significance of sequentiality in the construction of meaning and concept. As such, the film encroaches on 'narrative' cinema, but in a way which treats narrativization as problematic, not transparent." (Malcolm Le Grice)
L'Arrivée (1998)
by Peter Tscherkassky
35mm screened as 16mm, b&w, sound, 2 minutes
"L'Arrivée is Tscherkassky's second homage to the Lumière brothers. First you see the arrival of the film itself, which shows the arrival of a train at a station. But that train collides with a second train, causing a violent crash, which leads us to an unexpected third arrival, the arrival of a beautiful woman—the happy-end. "Reduced to two minutes L'Arrivée gives a brief, but exact summary of what cinematography (after its arrival with Lumières' train) has made into an enduring presence of our visual environment: violence, emotions. Or, as an anonymous American housewife (cited by T. W. Adorno) used to describe Hollywood's version of life: 'Getting into trouble and out of it again.'" (Peter Tscherkassky)
Astor Place (1997)
by Eve Heller
16mm, b&w, silent, 10 minutes
Passersby at Astor Place in New York City speak silent volumes as they move by the mirrored surface of a diner window. I wanted to capture the unscripted choreography of the street, its dance of gazes and riddle of identities. This film is informed by the work of the Lumière brothers, with an eye to permeating an authority of the static camera and establishing a question as to who is watching whom.
Ahead in Paris
by Lyle Pearson
16mm, color, silent, 7 minutes
"In France, Louis Lumière invented the motion picture and he developed the first motion picture projector. Ahead in Paris combines the subjects of Lumière—city streets and everyday life—with the technique of Georges Méliès. Other films have tried the same sort of thing—by Emile Cohl, Feuillade et al.—but not for some time. This is Paris, 1970, including footage shot at Nanterre, home of much student rebellion, beginning and ending in an area rebuilt from the hospital where Jean Cocteau wrote Opium." (Lyle Pearson)
Workers Leaving the GooglePlex (2011)
by Andrew Norman Wilson
digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes "Workers Leaving the GooglePlex investigates a top secret, marginalized class of workers at Google's international corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley. As I documented the mysterious 'yellow badge' Google workers, I simultaneously chronicled the complex events surrounding my own dismissal from the company. The reference to the Lumière Brother's 1895 film Workers Leaving the Factory situates the video within the history of motion pictures, suggesting both transformations and continuities in arrangements of labor, capital, media, and information." (Andrew Norman Wilson)
See You Soon, Lumière
attributed to Auguste and Louise Lumière;
35mm screened as digital video, color and b&w, silent w/musical soundtrack & narration by Bertrand Tavernier, 4 minutes
The Cineastes' Exit (Sortie des cineastes) (1995)
Digital video, b&w, silent w/musical soundtrack & narration by Bertrand Tavernier, 1 minute

Total running time: 1 hour 18 minutes