100 Years of Cinema

  • Jan Uhde


100 YEARS OF CINEMA: REMEMBERING BOLESLAW MATUSZEWSKI In 1995, the eyes of the film world seem to look back upon that celebrated December day a century ago, when the first moving images of Louis and Auguste Lumière flickered on the screen in the Indian Salon inside the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. But there was another man who lived in that same time and place, a long-forgotten visionary without whom we might have very little to celebrate today: Boleslaw Matuszewski. Already in 1898, Matuszewski publicly voiced the idea that films embody values transcending their primary purpose and that the life of a film should not end with its last theatrical presentation. This Polish cameraman, a Lumière employee, proposed that a Motion Pictures Historical Depository (Dépôt de cinématographie historique) be created, thus acknowledging the significance of preservation of filmed material for posterity. At that time, moving...