Thierry Frémaux on Why ‘Today, We Can Never Trust Images We See’ — but We Can Trust the Lumière Brothers and ‘Apocalypse Now’
Why it matters: Frémaux's take on cinema's past and future challenges us to reconsider what makes an image trustworthy.
- Thierry Frémaux, a film historian and director of the Institut Lumière, has released "Lumière, Le Cinéma!", an anthology of 130 restored short films by the Lumière brothers.
- The Lumière brothers invented the Cinématographe in 1895, a device Frémaux considers the original and perfect form of cinema, whose core mechanics remained constant until the digital age.
- Frémaux asserts that while modern images are untrustworthy, the Lumières' films, along with classics like "Apocalypse Now," represent a form of cinema that can still be trusted.
- The communal experience of watching films in a screening room, a 'second invention' by Lumière, is highlighted by Frémaux as an unchanging and essential aspect of cinema, despite evolving consumption methods like smartphones.
Thierry Frémaux, Cannes Film Festival artistic director and film historian, champions the enduring legacy of the Lumière brothers' invention, the Cinématographe, as the foundational and perfect apparatus of cinema, contrasting its inherent trustworthiness with the untrustworthy nature of modern digital images. He argues that while technology has evolved, the communal experience of watching films on a big screen remains unchanged and vital, even as consumption habits shift.
