Lumière and Company

Lumière and Company (original title: Lumière et compagnie) is a 1995 anthology film made in collaboration between forty-one international film directors. The project consists of short films made by each of the filmmakers using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers.^[1][2]

The shorts were edited in-camera and constrained by three rules:^[3]

1. A short may be no longer than 52 seconds
2. No synchronized sound
3. No more than three takes

Directors

Summary

1. Patrice Leconte: A recreation of L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat 100 years later at the same station.
2. Gabriel Axel: The evolution of the arts is shown, culminating in cinema. Then, two men shoot each other in a duel.
3. Claude Miller: A girl is repeatedly pushed off a scale by others, before a man picks her up and puts her on his shoulders before getting on the scale.
4. Jacques Rivette: A girl plays hopscotch while a woman roller-skates. The roller-skating woman collides with a man reading a newspaper.
5. Michael Haneke: Various shots of TV news on March 19, 1995, exactly 100 years after the filming of L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat.
6. Fernando Trueba: Felix Romero, A conscientious objector who has refused to partake in Spanish military service, departs from a prison in Zaragoza.
7. Merzak Allouache: A couple walk through a park and notice the camera. They both examine it before the man shoves the woman out of the way.
8. Raymond Depardon: Children use a ladder to put a hat on top of a large statue.
9. Wim Wenders: Two men examine a cityscape.
10. Jaco Van Dormael: A smiling couple kiss.
11. Nadine Trintignant: Tourists wander around the courtyard of the Louvre.
12. Régis Wargnier: A man in a park walks toward the camera. Voiceover recollects a scene from a film.
13. Hugh Hudson: Japanese schoolchildren in Hiroshima visit a monument. Audio from news reports of the bombing of Hiroshima plays.
14. Zhang Yimou: A man plays a traditional Chinese bowed musical instrument while a woman dances. They switch from their traditional clothing to punk fashion and the man plays a guitar while the woman thrashes her head.
15. Liv Ullmann: Cinematographer Sven Nykvist operates his camera.
16. Vicente Aranda: A victory parade drives through the street.
17. Lucian Pintilie: People climb into a helicopter. The helicopter lifts off.
18. John Boorman: Behind-the-scenes of the filming of Michael Collins.
19. Claude Lelouch: A couple embraces as various camera crews move around them.
20. Abbas Kiarostami: An egg fries on a skillet. A voicemail plays.
21. Lasse Hallström: A woman with a baby waves at a passing train.
22. Costa-Gavras: Various young adults gather around to look at the camera.
23. Yoshishige Yoshida: Alternates between a shot of Yoshida with the camera and a destroyed building in Hiroshima while the sound of an explosion is heard.
24. Idrissa Ouedraogo: A man goes for a swim in a river before being scared off by another man wearing a mask.
25. Gaston Kaboré: Outside of a cinema, a group of friends with a camera discover a truck full of filmstrips.
26. Youssef Chahine: Two men film the Pyramids of Giza. Another man runs up the them and destroys their camera before storming off.
27. Helma Sanders-Brahms: A tribute to Louis Cochet - a man directs lighting equipment next to a waterfall.
28. Francis Girod: A large image of a television displaying a director in his chair is painted over with white paint.
29. Cédric Klapisch: A man and a woman attempt to act out a scene where they embrace.
30. Alain Corneau: A woman dances as her clothes rapidly change colors.
31. Merchant & Ivory: People wander the city streets of Paris.
32. Jerry Schatzberg: A garbage worker puts trash in the back of his truck. A woman gets into an argument with him when she doesn't want to give up her trash.
33. Spike Lee: Footage of his newly-born daughter, Satchel Lee.
34. Andrei Konchalovsky: In a natural landscape, the carcass of an animal slowly decays.
35. Peter Greenaway: Various images, including the Lumière brothers, various years, a nude man sitting in a chair
36. Bigas Luna: A nude woman sitting in a field nurses a baby.
37. Arthur Penn: A man tied to a bed screams out. In the bunk above him is a pregnant woman.
38. David Lynch: Police discover a murder victim and inform the family.
39. Theo Angelopoulos: Homer wakes up on a rocky seashore. In his attempts to figure out where he is, he stares down the camera.

References

External links

• Lumière and Company at IMDb
• Lumière and Company at Rotten Tomatoes