Les frères Lumière and the history of cinema (plus Wes Anderson!)

A little known fact that we learned as soon as we moved to Lyon was that cinema was in fact invented here by brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière in March of 1895. Born to a photographer father, Antoine, they bought a factory to process photos from their father's studio in the neighbourhood of Monplaisir, near where James and I first lived when we arrived in the city. The short clip called La sortie des usines Lumière was of factory workers exiting the hangar. Part of the factory is preserved and is now home to the Lumière movie theatre, and the street on which it stands is fittingly called rue du premier film. The family built an impressive mansion next to the factory in which they lived and which houses the Lumière museum today. Here's a link to the film: http://youtu.be/EXhtq01E6JI

My fellow Ontarian friend Lancel told me that there would be a premiere of Wes Anderson's new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, at the Lumiere cinema and that he would be there himself so she got us a couple of tickets and a week ago we excitedly waited in the theatre for his arrival and the debut of the movie! If you are not familiar with Wes Anderson I recommend checking out one of his films which feature eccentric characters, highly stylized film sets and tend to be portrayed by the same cast of actors. 

The movie itself was true to his directorial style which I love and major props to Ralph Fiennes in this movie, his performance is just splendid (Anderson wrote the role with him in mind). There was a Q&A after the screening and then the cinema had a little surprise for him so everyone filed out of the theatre to the street. They had added a plaque on the Mur des cinéastes or wall of filmmakers for Wes Anderson so it was pretty cool to be there in person to see him receive the distinction among all the other grand names that have already been honoured.

There is also a film festival each year in Lyon bearing the Lumière name and which this year honoured Quentin Tarantino. Uma Thurman was there to present his achievement award to him along with Tim Roth and Harvey Keitel, and the rumours were that he ate at the very fancy restaurant that we live beside and there were paparazzi in our building's courtyard! So there you have it, Lyon is mad about movies.