Overview

"On 2 March 1974, Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque française, screened a partly impromptu edit of films and fragments from the nation’s silent film production." - IFFR 2019 Programme "It was originally made by Langlois for a presentation whose origins or motives are unclear, as is the thematic or narrative through-line in the epic, though it is said that when he presented the film Langlois was doing something akin to cutting it together live in the projection booth. It definitely goes chronologically through French cinema, definitely avoids a general historiography and obvious citations, and definitely gravitates towards films shot in Paris, yet none of these touchpoints elucidate exactly what Langlois’s epic essay film was intended for. It was found in the Cinémathèque on the shelves only recently and digitized, embalming what feels like a very specific and quite personal guided tour through cinema, with the guide (Langlois) missing." - Daniel Kasman, MUBI