Louis Lumière

Cast · Director · Writer

Born

October 5, 1864 · Besançon, France

Died

June 6, 1948

Birth name

Louis Jean Lumiere

"What interested Lumière was the extraordinary in the ordinary" - Jean Luc Godard Born in Besançon, France, in 1862, he was one of the pioneers in the development of cinema and the main creator of the cinematograph (cinèmatographe), the first device that allowed the recording and projection of films. At a very early age he was already working in his father's photographic workshop, and in a short time they managed to have the largest photographic plate factory in Europe. In an attempt to create an improved kinetoscope device, Louis came up with the cinematograph, a wooden box with a lens and 35mm film that, when turned by a crank, took snapshots that could then be projected. The brothers patented their invention in 1895, and Louis, using the talent inherited from his father, made what we know today as the first film in history: Workers leaving the Lumiere factory. It was a record of the workers leaving the factory, and consisted of a fixed and general shot that recorded the daily routine at the end of the working day. That same year, it was projected for the first time at the Grand Café in Paris, giving birth to cinema. After its success, the brothers opened theaters in different places and sent operators to record images around the world, experimenting on more than 1400 films (they lasted less than 1 minute). Louis also invented other devices, such as the Photorama, a device that allowed recording and projecting panoramic photographs. His work transformed the way we experience and understand moving images, and his legacy remains central to the history of cinema.