The Birth of a Cinematic Revolution
The extraordinary story of Eden, the world’s oldest cinema, begins in Paris. At a Masonic convent, Lyon photographer Antoine Lumière met Antoine Sellier from Ciotaden, chief mechanic at the shipyards, who praised the exceptional quality of the light in the landscapes of the Gulf of Amour as a perfect match for his new friend’s talent as a painter. Immediately captivated, Antoine Lumière, who had made his fortune thanks to Etiquettes Bleues, photographic plates invented by his son Louis, built a sumptuous mansion on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Château Lumière, which in 1893 became the family’s summer residence.
Antoine Lumière befriended the owner of the Eden Théâtre, Raoul Gallaud, and it was the two men’s friendship that made the theater on Boulevard de la Tasse the venue for the first Lumière films.
The Eden Théâtre and the First Lumière Films
The Eden Théâtre, built in 1889 by entertainment entrepreneur Alfred Seguin, was a popular venue for theatrical performances, music hall shows, and even boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling exhibitions. In the summer of 1895, having just patented the Cinématographe and shot the first film in the history of cinema, La sortie des usines Lumière, in Lyon, Louis Lumière took advantage of his family’s vacation in La Ciotat to shoot a dozen films, making the little Provencal port the true cradle of cinema.
On September 21, 1895, Antoine Lumière invited local society to the Palais Lumière for “a few cinematograph experiments.” During the evening, “all family and in daily clothes,” one hundred and fifty people watched in amazement the screening of a dozen films shot by Louis in Lyon (Sortie des usines Lumière, Incendie d’une maison, Place des Cordeliers) and La Ciotat (Baignades en mer, Le poisson rouge, Le dîner de bébé). For Louis, it was the scientific success of the cinematograph that “moved the image”; for his father Antoine, it was the Masonic sublimation of “eternal life.”
The First Screening at Eden Théâtre
His friend Gallaud, who was naturally present at this memorable evening, invited Antoine Lumière to repeat the experience at his Eden cinema, which he did a few days later, on October 14. But the screening was short-lived, because although Antoine was a man of initiative, his technical mastery was insufficient. This unfinished screening was remembered by those who knew the protagonists, but was not in fact the birth of cinema at Eden.
The First Commercial Screening
Convinced that his sons’ invention would bring fame and fortune to the Lumière family, Antoine organized another screening of the films presented in La Ciotat, in the Indian Salon of the Café de Paris, on December 28, 1895. Thirty-three paying spectators attended, including Méliès, who tried in vain to buy the patent from Antoine Lumière. History records this date as the first commercial cinema screening, but Ciotadens know the preamble.
In the months that followed, a double movement took place: Lumière operators traveled the world shooting films with their cinematographs, while movie theaters opened in the major cities of France and Europe.
The First Pay-Per-View Screening at Eden
On March 21, 1899, two hundred and fifty Ciotadens attended the first pay-per-view screening at Eden. The program featured nineteen Lumière films, including Caravane aux Pyramides d’Egypte and Lancement de navire à La Ciotat. All theaters of the time having been destroyed or converted into shops or parking lots, the screening on March 21, 1899, whose poster has been preciously preserved, makes l’Eden the oldest cinema in the world still in operation.
