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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Gustave Cauvin. The Inventor of Educational Cinema
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2022-11-27
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Cinéma & Cie
Isabelle Marinone
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Gustave Cauvin. The Inventor of Educational Cinema
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8
GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA
Isabelle Marinone, Université Paris III




   From the 1880s onwards, long before the birth of cinema, French anarchists were asking them-
selves questions about art and its potential for bringing about change in society. Initially they tried
to spread their ideas to the widest audience through literature and then through the theatre. Thus
they were among the first “socialists” to set up Théâtres du Peuple at the prompting of commit-
ted militants like Fernand Pelloutier (first secretary of the Bourses du Travail) or Jean Grave and
Paul Delesalle from 1895 on. The anarchists’ first encounter with cinema came through Delesalle,
a precision mechanic, who set up the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph in June 1895 and made
improvements to the original film reel mechanism within the device1. Such special contact
between the militant and the moving image had no impact upon the libertarians of the time. It took
another ten years, until 1908, before the anarchist press eventually turned their gaze in the direc-
tion of the cinema. Initially worried about the working conditions of the movie-makers, it later
occurred to them that this recent invention might prove “useful and educational” if directed at the
people. Lamenting the commercial side of things, they wanted to turn movie-making into a play-
ful learning device for the labouring classes. This quest was driven by a handful of libertarian mil-
itants who included Gustave Cauvin, the inventor of Cinéma Educateur who had to contend with
the skepticism of his comrades at the time.


The anarchists’ negative view of cinema
  Movie-making, a business launched by the Lumière brothers, interested only a very few late
19th century French anarchists. They and especially labour militants found little about the over-
whelming majority of artistic productions to commend them. At the time of a lecture on “Art and
revolt” delivered in the Faubourg du Temple on 30 May 1896 under the aegis of L’Art Social,
Fernand Pelloutier, one of the most fervent champions of the Bourse du Travail, set out where he
stood on the people’s leisure time and the cinema:

  Ground down by day by his exertions, brutalised by night by tainted alcohol and smutty
  shows, the mass has neither the time nor the open-mindedness required to reflect upon its lot;
  hence the indifference and cowardice with which the people who were behind 1848 and 1871
  endure the worst outrages today. It rinses away the slap in the face with absinthe, the uncer-
  tainty of the future is forgotten at the singing cafe and the manliness of insurrection is exer-
  cised in the whore-house instead2.


CINÉMA & CIE, no. 11, Fall 2008                                                                     79
ISABELLE MARINONE

  When the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists did spare a thought for the content of the shows
to which the masses had long been flocking, their assessment was scarcely any better. True, the
people and social movements were depicted on screen but most often through the prism of
ridicule or tragedy. The trade union leader was frequently represented as an alcoholic. In Le
Libertaire of 27 May 1911, an anarchist journalist – Emile Guichard – had this at once bilious
and sneering analysis to offer of what was still being called the Seventh Art:

  There can be nothing more repugnant than the scenes enacted before the eyes of the public.
  Patriotism, respect for the law, all of the bourgeois virtues are eulogised there... Good peo-
  ple, your naivety knows no bounds... But, look, can’t you see that these showmen are making
  you into brutes? Look, here’s a strike; see how they depict the workers in revolt; the leader,
  a CGT delegate no doubt, was shown in the last scene speechifying in a bar; he stands the
  honest working men a round of drinks and gets them drunk; and the money that pays for the
  drinks he got from a rival employer from a foreigner, and here we have the poor boobs
  smashing up the “good guy’s” machines, smashing up everything in the establishment of the
  fellow who wants to see the workers happy. [...] Bully for you, good folk!3

  Besides, the use of cinema as a police resource did nothing to foster a rapprochement between
this new artistic technology and the anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist movements. The use of
photography for the purpose of identifying and classifying the Communards in 1871 continued in
the case of cinema. One landmark, as an example of this practice, was the revolt by the vine-
growers of the Aube in April 1911. The courts came down hard on them and, capitalising upon
the presence of a 40,000-strong army of men, conscripted the cinema for service in its mopping-
up operation. The director of the Pathé movie-hall in Epernay had the brainwave of filming the
violent demonstrations. The bench and the police slowly reviewed the 600 metres of the movies
A Cavalry Charge, Insulting the Army and The Looting of the Gauthier Company, shot during the
events in question. The jerky movement of the film provided detailed pictures of those who riot-
ed throughout 12 April4. In the wake of this, an article appeared in Le Libertaire, pointing to this
scurrilous use of cinema:

  Since the newspaper vendors and businessmen of the cinema are merely tools of the police,
  let us be ruthless and let us sabotage both the folk who lead us by the nose [...] and the out-
  fits from Pathé, Gaumont and the rest who are operating like narks these days5.

  When not deploring its use as a policing resource, the libertarians were ranting about the sor-
did commerciality and poor quality of the screenplays on offer from the cinema. Which in part
accounts for the omission of cinema schedules from the “Entertainments” columns on anarchist
newspapers and reviews between 1895 and 1908.


The moving image in the service of libertarian propaganda
  It was initially through the trade unions that anarchists came to reconsider their views on this
technology. The libertarian press followed the activities of the Operators’ Union in 1908 and of
the Cinematography Staff Union which mounted impressive strikes in the Pathé cinemas in 1909.
But, looking beyond the social issue of wages, the libertarians very quickly turned their attention

80
                                        GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA

to cinema as a medium and how it might be used for purposes other than entertainment. The issue
of education by means of the moving image was raising its head. What they had initially taken
for an instrument for the stultification of the workers now became the focus of all their educa-
tional ambitions. After some considered thought, they realised that cinema can educate the work-
ers much faster than the book as images seep into the consciousness that much more easily. In
Switzerland, a fiefdom of anarchists ever since the exiles who had lived there in the years fol-
lowing the Commune, an «association for instruction by means of the image and cinematogra-
phy» was launched in 19086. The venture prompted the French to do likewise. And shortly after
that in Le Libertaire of 6 December 1908 we find the first mention made of screenings by anar-
chists. It came in the form of an advertisement for a causerie in Marseilles dealing with aerostat-
ics, a very popular subject at the time; the talk would be illustrated by a number of films. Stress
was laid on the fact that admission to the screenings was free of charge, the object being to
enlighten as many people as possible. Lots of talks (causeries) complete with screenings organ-
ised by militants for a working class, trade unionist audience in the People’s Universities and
Bourses du Travail soon followed. The films screened were Gaumont, Pathé or Eclair productions
with commentary and criticism from a libertarian compère. This, for instance, was the case with
Ferdinand Zecca’s and Lucien Noguet’s film Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme in 1911 or Albert
Capellani’s Germinal in 1913. There was criticism of the negative depiction of workers and strik-
ers in the films and above all the commentary concluded with a lengthy propagandistic rant on
topics ranging from teetotalism, anti-militarism, strikes and neo-Malthusianism, complete with a
promotion of contraceptive devices.

  It was from such talks that Gustave Cauvin emerged in 1910. He drew up and distributed a pam-
phlet designed for cooperatives, Bourses du Travail et des Syndacats; it bore the title L’Avenir
cinématographique. At the time, Cauvin was the most active advocate of propaganda by cinema.
Linked to the Seine Union des Syndicats, he was the first person to found a movie-making asso-
ciation, the Cinéma social association in 1911, which laid on screenings.


A singular militant
  Born on the outskirts of Marseilles in 1886, Gustave Cauvin grew up in a business family. He
left his native Provence very early for different towns, like Lyon, where he arrived at the age of
17 before moving on to Paris where he worked as a hair-dresser. Excused from military service
due to nervous problems, Cauvin, who had a reputation for being quick-tempered, became
embroiled in lots of punch-ups. He was known to the police even then. Returning to Marseilles
some months later, he gave up his hair-dressing business and became an agent for Singer sewing
machines. But he was very promptly accused by the company of embezzlement and dismissed on
18 January 1908. This dismal episode drove him into the arms of the trade unions. The police
recorded his presence at several trade union and libertarian meetings, and at the time of a labour
meeting in the Bourse du Travail on 13 June that year, a report by the Prefecture of the Bouches-
du-Rhône noted that Cauvin was «very vehement about the government which he refers to as a
government of assassins»7. At that meeting, he turned Clemenceau into a specific target of and he
wound up the meeting with these words: «The workers gathered in the Bourse du Travail invite
the working class to organise in order to drive from power the “bandits who govern us”»8.
  And Cauvin accompanied his spoken words with printed words. Thus he had an article pub-

                                                                                                81
ISABELLE MARINONE

lished in L’Ouvrier syndiqué, the official bulletin of the Bouches-du-Rhône union des chambres
syndicales ouvrières, two days after that, on 15 June 1908, where we read:

  Government of cowards and assassins. Yet again the sinister slipper of the Place Beauvau
  has just been drenched with blood and tears. In the wake of the carnage in Narbonne and
  Nantes [...] here comes more, the carnage in Draveil Vigneux. For upwards of a month, the
  workers from the Vigneux quarries had been on strike. Their tenacity and their energy exas-
  perated their ferocious employers and from then on, those craven employers spared no vile
  and base means in an attempt to get them to don the halter again9.

   Cauvin denounced the pressures brought to bear upon workers by the employers. When strikes
became overly irksome, the owners of the factories and firms concerned had no hesitation in call-
ing in the army to force the workers back to work. Death was a frequent occurrence in this sort
of dispute between 1908 and 1911. Given his stance, this militant was beginning to attract the
attention of certain prefectures of police which added his name to the Carnet B blacklist, listing
him as an anti-militarist, a revolutionary and a propagandist.
   Not only did he back the workers but he also backed the big anarchist causes such as the
Francisco Ferrer affair in 1909. He took violent exception to articles by Guy de Cassagnac car-
ried in the rightwing newspaper L’Autorité; they attacked the libertarian educationist. His support
for Ferrer became all the more ardent because, even then, he was developing a taste for libertar-
ian education to which he was to commit himself whole-heartedly a few years later through the
cinema and his future career as a teacher. A member of the Social Defence Committee, Cauvin
organised a rally in Marseilles on behalf of the founder of the Modern School. Particularly deter-
mined and not afraid of the police, he marched to the prefecture during that demonstration before
climbing on to a windowsill to direct an impassioned speech at the assembled crowd.
   From 1909 onwards his activism became more focused. He made it his business to set up an
inter-union revolutionary anti-militarist committee in his home town. The activist had anti-mili-
tarist propaganda pamphlets distributed to the homes of conscripts.
   Suspected by the police of being, like his brother Henri Cauvin, an individualist anarchist, he
also took on the role of saboteur about the town. But his activities did not stop there. In the leg-
islative elections of April-May 1910, he stood as a candidate for the Anti-parliamentary
Committee. Then in 1912, at which point he had become a correspondent for La Guerre sociale,
his attention focused particularly upon Eugene Humbert’s birth control propaganda. From then on
this erstwhile hair-dresser organised talks in front of roomfuls of workers and explained how and
why contraception constituted an essential factor in liberation. The police targeted him again, this
time for trespass against decency after he handed out a pamphlet entitled How To Avoid
Pregnancy, as well as selling certain “health goods”.
   After that Cauvin was off giving talks from town to town, turning up in Lyon, in Brittany or in
the Loire, his every movement recorded in the files of the local police. Wherever he went his
speeches were scathing about those who ruled and the incumbent ministers. He made a particu-
lar target of the army and the three years of compulsory military service. A memorandum from
the police inspector in Mohon on 18 June 1913 records:

  The speaker boasted that he was currently facing three indictments, one from the Dunkirk
  prosecutor’s office, and his verbal offences were as follows: he referred to M. Etienne, the
  minister of War, as a «shark from Morocco», a «huckster from Morocco» and a «shady deal-
  er». He said that the War minister has shares in several large industrial firms supplying war

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                                          GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA

  materials to the army and that he places orders with himself [...]. «We have a minister of War
  who is a thief», he shouted. «Yes, a thief, and I am not afraid to shout it out loud. I defy the
  authorities to deny it»10.


«Let us educate the masses of the people by means of cinematography»11
  As a delegate from the Seine Workers’ Teetotal Federation, Cauvin and the anarchist Jean
Marestan promoted meetings that recruited more and more support. He would punctuate his
speeches with film screenings. This was a practice he had borrowed from other lecturers back in
1910, but he gave it a boost with the establishment in 1911 of his “Cinéma social” association12,
in which he served as director, administrator, lecturer and operator. In his book Résister (1930)
he explained his first encounter with cinema as a propaganda medium.

  It was during a teetotalism talk at the Bourse du Travail in the Rue du Château d’eau in
  Paris. The matter under discussion was not very engaging. The speaker had managed to put
  two thirds of the audience to sleep. But all of a sudden the sound of a crank handle woke up
  the assemblage. The screen was lit up and began to stir. Eyes opened. The film literally
  grabbed the audience. No talk had ever succeeded that well13.

   Convinced of the advantages offered by cinema, he travelled around with a projector and some
reels, regaling the audience with strong images backing up his speeches. The strategy proved effec-
tive and the screenings were a roaring success, drawing huge numbers of people. And then, on a
grand revolutionary propaganda tour, on 17 June 1913, Gustave Cauvin faced a packed house. The
prefect of the Ardennes noted in a report to the Minister of the Interior that the lecture had attract-
ed upwards of 120 female workers and 300 working men. The films were described thus:

  Scenes depicting “social hell” were reproductions of workshop scenes from the big steel
  foundries and by contrast “the bourgeois paradise” was views of Nice and its surroundings
  (promenades, casinos...) where, the speaker added, the bourgeois and capitalists fritter away
  the money so hard earned by the proletariat. After that preamble, Cauvin launched into his
  talk. He pointed to the dangers of alcohol abuse and the devastating impact upon the work-
  ing class [...]. Putting the case for birth control, the speaker announced that the workers who
  do not have the means to raise a large family ought, in order to avoid deprivation and pover-
  ty, make do with one or two children, the better to feed them and provide them with the edu-
  cation they need. [...] The evening closed with a further series of movie screenings. Les
  Horreurs de la guerre showed the Balkan War (“The artillery barrage and its results”,
  “Convoys of wounded”, “The fleeing inhabitants”). Les Victimes de l’alcool showed a once
  happy home now, under the impact of drink, with the father driven mad and locked up in a
  padded cell, the mother driven to suicide and taking her daughter with her, the son joining a
  gang of house-breakers, getting arrested and being thrown in prison. The final screenings
  dealt with the demonstration in the Pré-Saint Gervais and the German socialists’ demon-
  stration in Leipzig14.

  Other films showed up in the schedules of the “Grand cinéma social”, such as the commercial
productions Little Moritz fait du sport, Saida bouleverse la force armée or even L’Assommoir.

                                                                                                    83
ISABELLE MARINONE

Thus did cinema become, for Cauvin, an essential tool for educating the people. Up until 1914,
the films screened during talks were mostly movies shot by the big production companies. The
movies, which also were leading up to propaganda lectures also and primarily served to instruct
workers in a follow-up to what the People’s Universities were doing.

  Despite the paucity of films at the time and the meagerness of our means, we managed,
  through these screenings, to offer “silent” movies about geography, natural history, health,
  sport, morality, adding our own commentary. Among the leading moral films we had one
  two-partner made by Pathé Frères in 1910, Les Victimes de l’alcool. Those who followed our
  screenings remembered them and it was so much our custom to screen this film (on our many
  tours of France, Switzerland and indeed Canada) that due to our commentary it looked as if
  the characters were speaking for themselves15.


The Cinéma du Peuple
  In 1913, Gustave Cauvin joined the Cinéma du Peuple, the very first cinema cooperative in
France to produce the first militant films in the history of French cinema to target a worker audi-
ence16. Initially helping out the association that had been launched by – among others – Yves-
Marie Bidamant, Sébastien Faure, Charles-Ange Laisant and Jean Grave, by renting out his pro-
jection gear, Cauvin went on to become its assistant administrator17. The project was launched at
the Revolutionary Communist-Anarchist Federation congress held in the Maison des Syndiqués
at 18, Rue Cambronne in Paris on 15, 16 and 17 August 1913. Advertised and subsidised by the
anarchist newspapers of the day, this organisation advocated a socially educational cinema acces-
sible to all, as witnessed by this piece from Le Libertaire on 13 September 1913:

  What a wonderful propaganda tool cinema is! Our adversaries have caught on that the cur-
  rent situation is the product of relentless propaganda churned out by the cinemas. The mili-
  taristic spirit, the silly, poisonous nationalism come from that! It is high time to fight back!
  The poison cleverly distilled in the minds of the people must be countered immediately by an
  antidote! [...] The Bourses du Travail, the cooperatives, the study groups, the trade unions
  and still other groups must become our customers. Instead of turning to the film-making com-
  panies who offer them crude militaristic pap, the workers’ organisations will turn to us for
  their film rentals. In the certainty that our thoughts are theirs18.

   The aim was to offer workers quality, morale-boosting, educational films. Tire of the Pathé,
Gaumont or Eclair productions offering a contemptuous portrait of the world of work, members
of the cooperative fought against these degrading images19. To that end they followed the exam-
ple of the Bussang Théâtre du Peuple launched by Maurice Pottecher in 1895 and the Paris
Théâtre du Peuple20 set up in 1912 by the anarchists Emile Guichard and Henri Antoine21. Like
those experiments, the cooperative undertook to «raise the intellectual level [...] by offering
views against war, against alcohol and against all social evils»22. This venture was then taken up
by many of the People’s Universities. Seven films were to be produced between 1913 and 1914,
mostly by the Spanish anarchist movie-maker Armand Guerra. Invoking the anarchists’ histori-
cal “memory” and that of the workers thanks to film images, the cooperative offered an “educa-
tional” form of cinema.

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                                          GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA

Memory and pedagogy as weapons of struggle
   “Memory” and “pedagogy” became the two principal ideas in libertarian cinema. Thus Les
Misères de l’aiguille (released 18 January 1914), the only production shot by Raphaël Clamour,
with Musidora23 cast in the leading role, was the first militant movie to deal with and denounce
the exploitation of working women, especially those working for the fashion houses. It was part
of a couple of productions by the organisation on this subject, alongside Victime des exploiteurs
shot by Armand Guerra (released on 28 March 1914), dealing with women working from home.
Here, in both cases, the viewer follows the tragic story of heroines who are going to slide into
social decline, exploited by their boss before being unfairly dismissed, and the plight of the
women depicted is hard, being bound up with extreme poverty, the prostitution that awaits them
or suicide. We are not dealing here with straightforward melodrama. The producers are bent on
showing a very concrete reality which, in the mind of the cooperative, should not set the specta-
tor to weeping but rather provoke a violent backlash against this state of affairs. The films could
have stopped at registering the tragedy and offering, as was the wont in the usual melodramas of
the day, a miraculous solution in the shape of marriage to some handsome, rich, decent man who
rescues the penniless, lonely women from their social surroundings. Instead, the Cinéma du
Peuple develops another more pugnacious and educational solution. Both in Les Misères de
l’aiguille and in Victime des exploiteurs, the heroines seek comfort in trade unionism or in liber-
tarian organisation which introduces them to a life of equality, solidarity, autonomy and shows
them how to assert themselves as independent women and how to fight effectively alongside
other workers against capitalist exploitation.
   Other Cinéma du Peuple films adopted the same approach, eg. Le Vieux Docker (released 28
March 1914), a re-enactment of the story of Jules Durand; or La Commune I: Du 18 mars au 28
mars 1871 (released 28 March 1914), the first film made about the Paris Commune. In these two
instances the object was to recall recent history, highlighting their tragic side and exposing the
disastrous effects of an unfair and anti-social government policy. The simple description of an
episode from the history of the Paris Commune, viz. the mutiny by the 88th regiment of the line,
the execution of Generals Thomas and Lecomte as well as Adolphe Thiers’s flight to Versailles
and the proclamation of the Paris Commune showed the viewer how powerful the organised peo-
ple might be. This “reconstitution-demonstration” offered a number of advantages, primarily that
of reminding or teaching the working class audience about a fragment of its history and then
explaining, thanks to certain descriptive sequences from the film how to organise for a fight
against the established government. In this militant libertarian movie-making the duty to remem-
ber went hand in hand with the need to understand and to explain, eventually inspiring the view-
er to find a practical application for the fight depicted on the screen24.
   Other Cinéma du Peuple films were geared towards more recent social struggles, like Une vis-
ite à l’Orphelinat national des chemins de fer à Avesnes, or indeed L’Hiver, plaisir des riches,
souffrance des pauvres (released 31 January 1914) a visual pamphlet on the living conditions of
the most privileged and of the indigent. It could be regarded as a fore-runner of Jean Vigo’s A
propos de Nice as it articulates the need to start in the here and now to build an anarchist society
by doing away with the social inequalities depicted in the film25.
   The Cinéma du Peuple survived for one year before it abruptly broke off on account of the First
World War, which put paid to it once and for all. It would subsequently provide the inspiration
for other experiments such as the Groupe Octobre during the 1930s and, according to Laurent
Mannoni26, all the “future initiatives of the Popular Front” as well as lots of collectives during the

                                                                                                   85
ISABELLE MARINONE

1970s (such as the Groupe Medvedkine, the Sochaux Collectif de cinéastes et travailleurs, the
Unité Production Cinéma Bretagne, Sion/Iskra, etc.).


Cinéma Educateur
  When the Cinéma du Peuple project ended and the First World War came along, Cauvin was
declared unfit for service. This was his chance to press on with propaganda by means of the mov-
ing image by returning to one of his favourite themes, one that the cooperative had not tackled –
the fight against alcohol that was the subject of his first book in 1913, Antialcoolisme et Néo-
Malthusianisme. Touring France again and brandishing a 35 mm projector, he would regularly
screen Gérard Bourgeois’s Les Dangers de l’alcool27. His engagement with social issues, espe-
cially certain diseases such as TB, opened up other avenues to him. In 1916 he drafted a second
work entitled La Guerre et la lutte contre le fléau. Cauvin gradually pulled out of adult education
and turned to the education of children. After his first experience in 1917 – when, during a ses-
sion of the chamber of deputies, he paraded a colony of poor children right through the Palais
Bourbon – he was increasingly of the view that the education of the young was crucial to every-
body’s progress. Since the war the workers had only rarely mobilised, the general trend being
towards depression. Cauvin redoubled his efforts but audiences continued to shrink and screen-
ings often ended in fisticuffs. Not one to lose heart, the activist carried on with his fight against
drink and in 1919 published Vers la délivrance. It was on the occasion of his various talks that he
bumped into the radical Edouard Herriot. Herriot seemed to show an interest in the anarchist and
his new scheme for secular educational instruction of children through the cinema.


The Offices of Cinéma Educateur
  Four years later, in 1921, Cauvin the agitator, now in cahoots with Herriot, decided to settle in
Herriot’s home town of Lyon. Espousing the same “rationalist” outlook as Cauvin and eager to
erect a barrier against Catholic sponsorship, the radical politician was attracted to the idea and
helped the libertarian get his project for Cinéma Educateur off the ground. Every Thursday, recre-
ational sessions were laid on in every district of the city. Leaving “memory” to one side in order
to focus on the “pedagogy” of libertarian struggle, Cauvin forged ahead with his propaganda. But
as the 1920s proceeded he calmed down and allied himself with local city leaders. Cauvin was
not yet turning his back on anarchism, but as time went on, he turned to an increasingly moder-
ate socialism28. Slowly Cinéma Educateur took shape and it appears to have enjoyed the support
of the freemasons, as had Cinéma du Peuple before it.

  To begin with, cinéma educateur had only 15,000 francs awarded by Lyon city council to
  work with, plus the something in the order of ten thousand francs that I raised myself from a
  variety of contributors with whom I had been in touch ever since my anti-drink activities.
  Whilst our budget in 1921 stood at only 15,000 francs, by 1929 this had risen to over 600,000
  francs. We had almost 900 correspondents, upwards of 300 programmes (each made up of
  10 to 12 reels) that were being sent out in all directions each week. At that time, we had up
  to 18 employees charged with making repairs, reissuing, transporting and delivering pro-
  grammes and mounting propaganda sessions29.

86
                                         GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA

  In 1924, thanks to the senator from Isère and president of the “Ligue d’enseignement” Joseph
Brenier, the “Cinéma Educateur Office” was set up. Cauvin clung to his original militant ideas
and was eager to take on the Church and promote secularism. He was also ready to push the idea
of cooperatives and pacifism and emancipation of the labouring classes. As his earlier pro-
grammes for workers, his programmes were made up of a variety of sorts of film, six to be pre-
cise: «Teaching films to illustrate teachers’ lessons, films to supplement adult courses, films for
agricultural lectures, training guidance films, technical education films and films on social
hygiene»30. So-called “open air” films (documentaries) were used in geography lessons. In most
cases full-length movies were bought and the “stock footage” was available from commercial
sources. Not until 1929 were cartoons especially destined for children introduced by the Musée
pédagogique. The latter came up with footage such as The Rhine, Tunis, France’s Coast and The
Art Foundry or indeed The Lathe-Operator. Cauvin’s Cinéma Educateur offices supplied films to
secular schools which ordered them, delving into the stocks held by the Musée and by the Paris
City Filmothèque. The propagandist bemoaned the exorbitant costs of shooting short education-
al movies, but stuck it out.

  Organising the Thursday shows was the Office’s most important concern. It was also one of
  the most difficult for we had to find quite a large number of films and they had to be suitable
  for children. Now, let’s remember that films for children could not include love stories, gun-
  fire or violence31.

   Regional activity expanded quite quickly, thanks to funding received from the departments. Up
until 1931 Cinéma Educateur thrived. There were teaching staging educational sessions in their
classes and recreational shows for the general population. Profits from the latter helped defray the
costs of movie-making. After the advent of “talkies”, the expansion of the project slowed down.
The new sound recording cinema gear was too expensive: «The earliest “talkie” equipment was
very pricy. The first westerns cost something like 500,000 francs [...]. The main obstacle to the
growth of “talkie” cinéma educateur was the fierce cost of “talkie” equipment»32.
   The Office did manage gradually to replace the “silents” with “talkies” as far as the Thursday
schedules were concerned. In 1938-1939, Cauvin recorded a total of 2,400 “silent” showings and
1,260 “talkies”. Right from the outset, the venture was not content just to supply programmes to
school and post-school ventures. It also organised propaganda tours. Gustave Cauvin’s militant
activity was alive and well. Every year, two or three outfits would tour the towns with successful
films, organising screenings. Since the smaller towns did not have the wherewithal to buy their
own projector, this system still allowed them to have film screenings anyway. Any profits were
returned in their entirety to the coffers of the local schools. In addition, Cauvin offered films to
Spanish refugees at no cost.
   Whilst the Office was awash with initiatives, the Church had targeted Cinéma Educateur.
Despite the best efforts of rightwing mayors and integrist clerics, the Office weathered the storm
and in fact the secular structures grew to a considerable extent. Technical innovations boosted this
– developments such as the introduction of the “Pathé Baby”. Teachers strapped for money could
use this mini-apparatus to illustrate their lessons. However, the 9.5 mm format was not entirely up
to meeting the needs of post-school shows and in country towns the populace preferred to go and
watch the superior projections or show in the parochial halls with their 35 mm films. Cauvin then
switched to Pathé’s proposed new 17.5 mm format (also known as “Pathé Rural”). Far superior to
the 9.5 mm format, this equipment had the advantage of being cheaper and less bulky than the 35
mm gear. Cauvin settled on the 16 mm form, which, as he saw it, was more suited to the 35 mm:

                                                                                                 87
ISABELLE MARINONE

  Lots of companies printed films in 16 mm. There was quite a large number of these on the
  market, but rental charges were all too often still higher than we were paying for 35 mm.
  footage, the latter format being stand on the commercial market and there was plenty of
  footage available [...]. In my view, the State should have made a considerable injection of
  funding into educational filming to ensure the success of the 16 mm format. But experience
  has shown us that the State’s sacrifices on behalf of education have been negligible [...]. We
  should not despair of 16 mm, which is the standard for classwork33.

  In 1927 a 600 metre documentary about their educational project was produced by the Cinéma
Educateur Office in Lyon. Then in 1931, three documentaries appeared34, one of them dealing
with the Fourvière disaster with the other two on Les Enfants de la montagne and La Fête du sou
des écoles. Gustave Cauvin worked with collaborators like Louis Colin in Nancy, Jacques Soleil
in Clermont-Ferrand, René Pestre in Algiers and Eugène Reboul in Saint-Etienne, who also
worked on the idea of Cinéma Educateur. Reboul, one of Cauvin’s closest colleagues, published
an instruction manual for al teachers – Le Cinéma scolaire et éducateur – in 1926. In partnership
with the Office he shot a number of shorts such as Le 42ème Congrès national de la ligue (1926),
Les Fêtes fédérales de gymnastiques du sud-est de la Loire (1927), Une Colonie de vacances au
château de Montbamir (1928) or Une Capitale industrielle, Saint-Etienne (1928).


Experiment rooted in anarchism
  Cauvin, having come to be acknowledged by everybody (even by the leading politicians of the
day) as the leader managed to marry his anarchist militant vigour and the cause of cinéma édu-
cateur. He wrote around twenty works, most of them destined for use in education35. The only
thing was that the Vichy regime, during the war, dismantled the Offices, but they were to bounce
back at the end of those dark times. The one-time anarchist was as energetic as he had ever been
and was still fighting on behalf of the weakest and poorest. Charles Perrin tells us that:

  Even in the wake of the last war, when I met him in 1949 as a broken and ailing man, he was
  still carrying on the struggle. Sickened by the tolerance shown towards abusive parents, he
  had organised a neighbourhood commando made up of 3 or 4 burly types whom he would
  send out on [...] illegal [...] punitive expeditions from time to time. The guilty parties would
  be given a sound thrashing and warned that they would be finished off if there was any rep-
  etition. I had the honour of taking part in one such session one day36.

  After having been drawn to socialism during the 1920s, the libertarian Cauvin finished up as a
communist.
  Cinéma Educateur was to prove a considerable influence on the educationist Célestin Freinet
who was to take up Cauvin’s ideas by producing his own films such as Yves Allégret’s film Prix
et Profits or La Pomme de Terre in 1931-1932 (Prices and Profits or The Potato) with his
Coopérative de l’Enseignement Laïc (Secular Education Cooperative)37. Gustave Cauvin died on
1 November 1951, leaving behind a project which, to use his own words, could never have exist-
ed but for its libertarian roots.




88
                                              GUSTAVE CAUVIN, THE INVENTOR OF EDUCATIONAL CINEMA

1    Jean Maitron, Paul Delesalle, un anarchiste de la Belle époque, Fayard, Paris 1985.
2    Fernand Pelloutier, L’Art et la révolte (1896), Place d’armes, Paris 2002, p. 19 (my translation).
3    Emile Guichard, “Au cinéma”, in Le Libertaire, 27 May 1911, p. 2 (my translation).
4    Slava Liszek, Champagne, un siècle d’histoire sociale, Editions de La Vie ouvrière, Paris 1995, p. 37.
5    A. Dauthuille, “En Champagne, Cinéma-Police”, in Le Libertaire, 29 April 1911, p. 3 (my translation).
6    M. Guinaud, “L’Association pour l’instruction par l’image et la cinématographie”, in Ciné-journal, 28
     January 1911, p. 7.
7    Rapport de Police, Dossier Gustave Cauvin, in Dossier “Anarchistes Allemands”, Archives rapatriées de
     Russie, Surveillance des Anarchistes, 19940498 art. 8 (Centre des Archives Contemporaines), p. 25 (my
     translation).
8    Ibidem, p. 30.
9    Ibidem.
10   Ibidem, p. 7.
11   Gustave Cauvin in Raymond Borde, Charles Perrin, Les Offices du cinéma éducateur et la survivance
     du muet 1925-1940, Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon 1992, p. 12 (my translation).
12   Gustave Cauvin, Le Cinéma éducateur à l’école et dans nos œuvres, Office régional du cinéma éduca-
     teur, Lyon 1939, p. 7.
13   Raymond Borde, Charles Perrin, Les Offices du cinéma éducateur et la survivance du muet 1925-1940,
     cit., p. 11.
14   Rapport de Police, Dossier Gustave Cauvin, cit., pp. 9-10 (my translation).
15   Gustave Cauvin, Le Cinéma éducateur à l’école et dans nos œuvres, cit., p. 6.
16   Laurent Mannoni, “28 octobre 1913: création de la société Le Cinéma du Peuple”, in 1895, no. hors
     série, 1993, p. 100.
17   Tangui Perron, “Le Cinéma du Peuple”, in Le Mouvement social, no. 172, July-September 1995, p. 29.
18   Anonyme, “Le Cinéma du Peuple, société coopérative anonyme à personnel et capital variables”, in Le
     Libertaire, 13 September 1913, p. 4 (my translation).
19   Yves-Marie Bidamant, “Pourquoi un Cinéma du Peuple?”, in Le Libertaire, 20 September 1913, pp. 2-3.
20   Denis Gontard, La Décentralisation théâtrale en France, 1895-1952, Société d’édition d’enseignement
     supérieur, Paris 1973.
21   Isabelle Marinone, Anarchisme et cinéma: Panoramique sur une histoire du 7ème art français virée au
     noir, Thèse de Doctorat (Ph.D.), December 2004, Université Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne, direction Jean
     A. Gili et Nicole Brenez.
22   Yves-Marie Bidamant, “Pourquoi un Cinéma du Peuple ?”, cit.
23   Patrick Cazals, Musidora la dixième muse, H. Veyrier, Paris 1978.
24   Isabelle Marinone, Cinéma et Anarchisme en France, une identité politique à travers le 7ème art, in Pierre
     Arbus, Franck Bousquet (eds.), Cinéma et identités collectives, Actes du 3ème colloque de Sorèze,
     Manuscrit Université, Paris 2006, pp. 237-260.
25   Isabelle Marinone, “Jean Vigo: un cineasta impregnado de anarquismo”, in Archivos de la Filmoteca,
     no. 52, February 2006, pp. 23-41.
26   Laurent Mannoni, “28 octobre 1913: création de la société Le Cinéma du Peuple”, cit., p. 107.
27   Jean-Jacques Meusy, La Bellevilloise (1877-1939), Créapluis, Paris 2001, p. 187.
28   Jean Maitron, Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français, Editions ouvrières, Paris
     1964-1992.
29   Gustave Cauvin, Le Cinéma éducateur à l’école et dans nos œuvres, cit., p. 8.
30   Ibidem.
31   Ibidem, p. 16.
32   Ibidem, p. 24.
33   Ibidem, p. 29.
34   Raymond Borde, Charles Perrin, Les Offices du cinéma éducateur et la survivance du muet 1925-1940,
     cit., p. 61.
35   Works by Cauvin, in chronological order. Antialcoolisme et Néo-Malthusianisme: la moralité du Néo-
     Malthusianisme (Déclarations devant les Tribunaux de 1912 et 1913), Le travail, Lyon 1913. La Guerre
     et la lutte contre le fléau, Le travail, Lyon 1916. Le Péril alcoolique, 1916. Une campagne à travers la
     France, 1917. Une campagne contre le poison national, 1918. Vers la délivrance, Le travail, Lyon 1920.
     L’Office Régional du Cinéma Educateur de Lyon, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1925. Le
     Cinéma Educateur, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1927. Vouloir, Office régional du ciné-

                                                                                                            89
ISABELLE MARINONE

   ma éducateur, Lyon 1928. Persévérer, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1929. Résister, Office
   régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1930. Dix ans après, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon
   1931. Eclairer, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1932. Le Cinéma Educateur au service de la
   laïcité, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1936. L’Image animée, pour l’amusement et l’édu-
   cation des petits et des grands à la ville et à la campagne, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon
   1937. L’Enfer des gosses: Comment supprimer le scandale de l’enfance malheureuse, Office régional
   du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1937. L’Enseignement, les loisirs, la défense laïque et l’Entr’aide sociale
   par le Cinéma Educateur, Office régional du cinéma éducateur, Lyon 1938.
36 Raymond Borde, Charles Perrin, Les Offices du cinéma éducateur et la survivance du muet 1925-1940,
   cit., p. 13.
37 Henri Portier, Cinématographe et mouvement Freinet 1927-1940, Institut coopératif de l’école moder-
   ne, Paris 1990.




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