A special preview screening before its release in New York City, new restorations of 100+ Lumière shorts!

Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinéma! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for both everyday and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious retelling of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

Silent films with French narration and English subtitles, plus musical accompaniment