Cinematograph No. 1
The mother machine that shot and screened cinema's birth.
Matt Neale from UK — CC BY 2.0 · Victorgrigas — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Victorgrigas — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Victorgrigas — CC BY-SA 4.0
They did not conjure 'moving pictures' from nothing — Edison's peephole machine came first — but invented cinema as we live it: one light machine filming, printing and projecting to a paying audience on a screen. Their December 1895 Paris show is the certified birth night; their first films were shot here before it.
For film lovers, no question. For others: a lovely house museum and an astonishing invention story in a quiet ninety minutes — and October's Lumière Festival turns the quarter into the world capital of classic cinema, the grandest time to come.
'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat' — legend says the first audience fled believing it was coming through the screen. Film historians doubt the stampede, but the awe was real: humans seeing live motion recorded for the first time in history.
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Here cinema was literally born: in this quarter the Lumière brothers filmed 'Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory' in 1895 — history's first film — and the museum's address is itself 'First Film Street'. It fills their father's grand villa, with the surviving factory shed from that film standing in the square. Inside is the first miracle's journey: Cinematograph No. 1 — the machine that shot and projected the first films — and the family's inventions from photographic plates to early colour photography and panoramic Photorama images, with the first films screening in the villa's hall. For film lovers a founding pilgrimage; for everyone else, the tale of a genius family that changed humanity from a Lyon villa — in a quiet local quarter far off every tourist route.
The mother machine that shot and screened cinema's birth.
The father's ornate mansion — the miracle family at home.
The factory exit, the sprinkled gardener, the train — screened where born.
25 Rue du Premier-Film, 69008 Lyon