Scenes From Advent of Cinema, Showing in Paris
電影發源地 巴黎辦特展
By Rachel Donadio

PARIS – Long before the obsessive documentation and online sharing of every moment of our waking lives, there were two brothers from Lyon whose innovations opened the door to the future.
早在我們自我強迫記錄和上網分享沒睡著的每一刻前，來自里昂的兩兄弟就藉由他們的創新開啟了通往未來之門。

A new exhibition at the Grand Palais here celebrates the Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, whose last name means light and who helped invent cinema as we know it – as well as color photography and 3-D technology. The show coincides with the120th anniversary of the first film screening for a paying audience, a grainy black and white film showing workers leaving the Lumière factory, which manufactured photographic equipment.
巴黎大皇宮的新展覽是為紀念路易．盧米埃與奧古斯特．盧米埃這兩兄弟，盧米埃這個姓氏的意思是光，兩兄弟協助發明了我們所認識的電影，以及彩色攝影和3-D技術。展覽正好碰上第一部售票電影放映的120周年，那是一部顆粒很粗的黑白片，播映工人從生產照相器材的盧米埃工廠離開的情景。

The exhibition “Lumière! Inventing Cinema” showcases early films by the brothers, restored by the Institut Lumière in Lyon; along with examples of early cinema technology – kinetoscopes, zoetropes – and documentation about the rapid spread of the medium. It runs through June 14.
展覽名為《盧米埃！發明電影》，展示兩兄弟的早期電影，由里昂的盧米埃電影學院修復，一同展出的還有早期電影技術的實例－早期的電影放映機（西洋鏡）、旋轉觀看可見連續活動畫面的畫筒，以及記錄電影迅速普及的文獻資料。展覽舉行至六月十四日。

The show captures a time of optimism when viewers first had access to footage from around the world, before the carnage of World War I. It also seeks to put the Lumière brothers in context. Many innovators, including Thomas Edison in the United States, were experimenting with recording images. But it was Louis Lumière who in 1894 invented the cinematograph, a device that capture 17-meter films (each about 50 seconds long) on 35-millimeter strips and project them. He patented it in 1895.
展覽記錄了觀眾最初能一睹世界各地影片的樂觀時光，那是在第一次世界大戰的殺戮出現之前。展覽也試圖釐清盧米埃兄弟在影史的脈絡。許多發明家，包括美國的愛迪生，當時都在進行影像實驗。卻是路易．盧米埃在1894年發明了電影攝影放映機，用35米釐底片拍出17公尺長的膠卷（每段長約50秒）後，投射在銀幕上。他在1895年獲得專利。

“He’s the last of the inventors but he’s the first of the filmmakers,” said Thierry Frémaux, director of the Institut Lumière. “There’s something extremely cinematographic in the films that Louis Lumière and his cameramen made,” he added.
「他在發明家中名列末位，卻是電影人的先驅，」盧米埃電影學院院長蒂埃里．弗雷莫表示。他又說：「在路易．盧米埃和他的攝影師所拍的影片當中，有非常強烈的電影特質。」

Both brothers were inventors, but Auguste focused more on the science, while Louis enjoyed filmmaking. As soon as the technology took hold, they dispatched a team of novice filmmakers across the globe to document the known world – street scenes in Japan and Budapest, oil drilling in Azerbaijan, opium smokers in Indochina.
兩兄弟都是發明家，但奧古斯特偏重科學，而路易則樂在攝影。技術一到位，他們立刻派出一組拍電影的新手到全球各地記錄已知的世界－東京和布達佩斯的街景，亞塞拜然的鑽油實況，中南半島的鴉片鬼。

Gabriel Veyre, a young pharmacist, became one of the most widely traveled of the Lumière cameramen. In 1896, he shot and screened the first projections in Mexico. “Everyone was exclaiming: Muy bonito! How beautiful, how beautiful!” Veyre wrote from Mexico City to his mother in France in a letter quoted in the exhibition.
年輕藥劑師賈布里．維赫成為盧米埃兄弟的攝影小組中，旅行範圍最廣的成員之一。1896年，他在墨西哥拍攝並播映首部投影片。維赫從墨西哥市寄給在法國的母親信中寫到：「每個人都驚呼：非常好！真漂亮，真是漂亮！」這段內容也在展覽之列。

The show also includes letters home by Constant Girel, another cameraman, who shot the first films in Polynesia and Japan, and Marius Chapuis, who left for Russia at age 18 in 1896 and screened the first film in Odessa that year.
展覽還包括康斯坦．吉赫寄回家的信，他也是攝影師，在波里尼西亞和日本拍攝首批影片；以及馬赫里斯．夏皮，1896年他18歲時前往俄羅斯，當年在敖德薩播放首部影片。

The 1,500 films made by the Lumières and their filmmakers include fiction films as well as reportage, such as “Pierrot and the Fly,” filmed by Louis Lumière in 1896. In the exhibition, all 1,500 films are being shown on a wall-size screen.
盧米埃兄弟和拍攝團隊製作了1,500部影片，其中包括敘事和紀實類型，像是路易．盧米埃1896年拍攝的《小丑與蒼蠅》。在展覽中，1,500部作品都在牆壁大小的銀幕上放映。

The story of the Lumières is also a story of canny entrepreneurs. The brothers’ father, Antoine, was a sign painter turned portrait photographer. In 1881, at age 17, Louis discovered a way to capture images on dry plates with gelatin silver bromide. Antoine went into business to manufacture the product.
盧米埃兄弟的故事也是精明創業家的故事。兩兄弟的父親安托萬原本是廣告看板的畫家，後來變成肖像攝影家。1881年，17歲的路易發現用明膠溴化銀底片感光的方式。安托萬投入明膠溴化銀底片的生產。

The exhibition also has a model of the Salon Indien inside the elegant Hotel Scribe in Paris, where 10 Lumière films were on the program of the first public screening in 1895. “Lumière invented the movie theater,” Mr. Frémaux said. “Of course, you can watch films on watches, on iPhones, great. But the movie theater is incomparable.”
展覽現場也有一個在豪華的巴黎斯克里布酒店內的大咖啡館的模型，盧米埃兄弟1895年首次公演10部電影就是在這裡。「盧米埃發明了電影院，」弗雷莫說。「當然你可以在手表、iPhone上面看電影，很棒。但電影院是沒得比的。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/technology/a-wi-fi-barbie-doll-with-the-soul-of-siri.html

2015-04-28聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 田思怡譯 原文參見紐時週報十一版右