#pariscinema

Stills from 'L’Écrin du Rajah' (The Rajah’s Casket), Gaston Velle, Pathé, 1906, from 'City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907,' published by @delmonico_books & @lacma⁠ ⁠ "Glimpses of faraway lands were not limited to actualité films, but also appeared in fictional movies. This film exemplifies a fantasy, set in an Orientalist mélange of the Middle East and South Asia, featuring fanciful details of costume and art direction, especially the creative uses of color stenciling and tinting. The narrative itself was less important than the sense of a virtual journey spectators embarked on as they watched an invented world unfold."⁠ ⁠ Read more about the book via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ Edited with text by Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen, Vanessa R. Schwartz. Text by Brian R. Jacobson.⁠ ⁠ #cityofcinema #19thcenturyparis #findeciecle #earlycinema #pariscinema #lacma #cinema #exhibitioncatalog #delmonicobooks ⁠#earlyfilm #film @museeorsay⁠ #lecrindurajah #rajahscasket #gastonvelle https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb8ZnjMprcH/?utm_medium=tumblr

Stills from 'La Statue' by Alice Guy-Blaché, Gaumont, 1905, from 'City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907,' published by @delmonico_books & @lacma⁠ ⁠ "The confusion brought about by mechanization is mocked in this film, as two clowns struggle with technologies that enable and capture movement. One clown discovers he can turn a crank to set the statue in motion, then goes away to obtain a camera with which to photograph this curiosity. On his return, he ends up swapping places with the statue (who exit in frustration) and proves himself an unsatisfactory photographic subject for the other clown. This photographic finale also appears in Alice Guy-Blaché’s 1900 movie 'Chez le photographe, in which a man⁠ refuses to stay immobile while his picture is taken."⁠ ⁠ Read more about the book via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ Edited with text by Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen, Vanessa R. Schwartz. Text by Brian R. Jacobson.⁠ ⁠ #cityofcinema #19thcenturyparis #findeciecle #earlycinema #pariscinema #lacma #cinema #exhibitioncatalog #delmonicobooks ⁠#earlyfilm #film @museeorsay⁠ #AliceGuyBlaché #lastatue https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb72hdRrreW/?utm_medium=tumblr

Featured image—a detail of an October 1908 photograph of the Omnia-Pathé cinema at 5, boulevard Montmartre, Paris—is reproduced from 'City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907.' Published to accompany the exhibition currently on view @lacma this rich, 192-page volume tells the story of the pre-Hollywood origins of cinema emerging out of nineteenth-century Paris through posters, paintings, film stills and studio and documentary photography. It also provides a snapshot of the city that Walter Benjamin called “the capital of the nineteenth century” at the moment of modernization, when the very nature of visual art expanded exponentially. “Daily life hinged on vision in motion,” curators Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen and Vanessa R. Schwartz write: “lens- and projection-based entertainments (from dioramas to magic lantern shows to cinema) corralled vision into states of attention and distraction, and these new preoccupations led to aesthetic and scientific experiments in defining, fixing and representing isolated and serial moments, pursued in inventors’ workshops, physiological laboratories and artists’ studios. The French took pride in their position as key innovators in all the arts, from painting, sculpture and architecture; through reproductive media such as lithography and photography; and extending to the performing arts and novel leisure activities such as shopping in department stores and visiting nightclubs, dance halls and new kinds of theatrical presentations.”⁠ ⁠ Read more via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ Copublished by @delmonico_books⁠ ⁠ #cityofcinema #19thcenturyparis #findeciecle #earlycinema #pariscinema #lacma #cinema #exhibitioncatalog #delmonicobooks ⁠#earlyfilm #film @museeorsay⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb7ptjmuwmI/?utm_medium=tumblr

"Very much grounded in scholarship and sound thinking rather than in tiresome trendiness," 'City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907' is on view @lacma and the @wsj is talking!⁠ ⁠ David Mermelstein writes, "Curated by Leah Lehmbeck and Britt Salvesen of LACMA and Vanessa R. Schwartz of the University of Southern California, the exhibition is at once two things: an early, or even pre-, history of cinema and also a snapshot of Paris in that vital period when the very nature of visual art was being redefined. The show is an impressive grab bag of paintings, sculptures, lithographs, early photography and various objects either directly connected with the topic (like magic lanterns and stereoscope postcards) or tangentially so (a porcelain tableau of an itinerant peep show circa 1850 or a silk folding fan from around 1905 depicting a clowder of cats intently viewing animated rats projected on a screen).⁠ ⁠ The exhibit’s organization—with various media commingling in vague groupings like 'The World Comes to Paris,' 'Worlds for World Making' and 'Around the World'—may strike some as haphazard, but that loose presentation lends the show desirable energy and prevents the scourge of didacticism from prevailing. It also means the suites of objects can be appreciated in pretty much whatever order a visitor wishes. As with a Parisian street scene, there is no 'proper' way to view things; the point is to take it all in."⁠ ⁠ Read the full review via linkinbio and get the catalog, copublished by @delmonico_books at your favorite independent bookstore!⁠ ⁠ #cityofcinema #earlycinema #pariscinema #lacma #cinema⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/Caz_ynxJ5OI/?utm_medium=tumblr

https://www.volup2.com/articles-and-blog/2020/11/1/paris-the-city-of-cinema-by-kirese-narinesingh