“In one sleepless night, my brother invented cinema,” Auguste Lumière is said to have said about Louis Lumière, at the time when they were both developing the cinematograph. At least that’s what Thierry Frémaux says in “Lumière! The adventure continues”. The documentary recovers the pioneering device of filming and projecting moving images as an object of fascination for the French.
Released this Thursday (18), the film arrives in Brazil nine years after the first production, which also brought together more than a hundred short films by the duo. Between little-known scenes from the 19th century and others that have become popular throughout history, the director of the Lumière Institute tells the story through the materials chosen and reveals dreams that time has not erased.
“I don’t know any film that is old. We never say that a Shakespeare is old, that a Mozart is old or that a Van Gogh is old. Why is a black and white silent film considered old?” he declared during a visit to São Paulo. The simultaneous action of inventors like Thomas Edison and filmmakers like Georges Méliès has raised doubts among film historians, and Frémaux argues that the Enlightenment never received the recognition it was due.
“I wanted people to be able to choose between a film by Kleber Mendonça Filho, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lumière when buying a ticket. I wanted to experience their work in an hour and a half and show that there are still reasons to go to the cinema and that audiences can learn more about themselves.”
The mention of Pernambuco is no coincidence. Accustomed to attending several screenings in the same day, Frémaux sleeps little and is the ideal cinephile to direct not only the institute dedicated to Lumière archives and exhibitions, but also the most important cinematographic event of all: the Cannes Film Festival.
In the 2025 edition, the fiction “The Secret Agent” won the awards for best direction, best actor for Wagner Moura and best film, according to the critics. Despite the trophies, this is not the first trait of the Brazilian that comes to the coach’s mind. It recalls “Retratos Fantasmas”, a documentary by Mendonça Filho presented at the event in 2023. Both works discuss, in their own way, the decline of street cinemas in Recife.
“The first trip I made for the Festival was to Brazil. It was the year when Karim Aïnouz released “Madame Satã”. Later, I discovered the films of Fernando Meirelles, I began to admire Walter Salles for “Linha de Passe” and the passion only grew. I always knew that Brazil was a great land of cinema,” says Frémaux.
Visiting the capital São Paulo, he presented “A Aventura Continua” at the Cinemateca and participated in a conversation with the director of “I’m Still Here.” Faced with the campaign that earned Brazil its first Oscar, Salles is another who had to get used to a few hours of sleep, as he admits in the report.
“After that time, Brazil disappeared. But something brought it back and new authors appeared. This shows that a country of cinema will never die and that we will have a future marked by the meeting of artists from all over the world,” says the Frenchman. This year’s Cannes competition was not spared: many criticized the list for the excess of Americans and Europeans and the scarcity of names from regions like Africa.
Oriental cinema, on the other hand, and even in small quantities, won the festival. The experimental approach of “Resurrection”, directed by China’s Bi Gan, enchanted the judges with its strangeness and necessitated the creation of a special trophy. The film functions as a sort of love letter to cinema and celebrates the Enlightenment, despite the kilometers that separated it from Asia.
“Few directors carry on the brothers’ legacy. But perhaps they raise the same questions that preoccupied them: ‘What should I do with my camera?’ “What is the best position?” What story do I want to tell? » said Frémaux. “I also like the idea that Chinese music is not the same as London rock’n’roll. In the same way that Brazilian music is not French music. But it’s good for a Chinese to be inspired by the Light. By using the camera to construct an image of the world, we speak the same language. »
In his film, the director investigates images of different types. Some overlook urban centers and stand out for the number of pedestrians. Others favor nature and depict the plains crossed by a train or the sea covered with waves. There is enough time for short stories, less than a minute.
Frémaux quotes Mendonça Filho about the meeting between reality and fantasy: “fiction films are the best documentaries”. In May, many films screened at Cannes flirted with the fantastical. “Sirât” built a spiritual rave to debate humanity, “The Sound of Fall” made terror a metaphor for female oppression and “The Secret Agent” deciphered military dictatorship in the light of urban legends.
“Fantasy is cinema. Everything is cinema and the styles are innumerable. Today, arthouse cinema is very valued, but we must also observe the direction of mainstream cinema. These productions have become more and more fragile and we must remember that the success of commercial films helps arthouse films.”
The big boss boasts of having chosen Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” almost 20 years ago as the first fantasy film screened at the festival. Today, the Mexican filmmaker can compete at the Oscars for his adaptation of “Frankenstein”, produced by Netflix. According to Frémaux, the scale of the project is not up to the level of cell phone screens or streaming platforms, even if he recognizes that the services facilitate his marathons and that his cinephile comes from television.
He says he’s excited to see Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” captured in IMAX. “We shouldn’t be discussing whether a film should be shot on film or with digital cameras. We should be discussing cinema as a social act. When a cinema closes, it closes forever.”
Frémaux does not share the innocence he claims to see in the Lumière films. The networks amplify images of everyday life and the trains that seemed to be moving towards the public stopped scaring them decades ago. Keeping young people awake in the darkness of cinema has become a big challenge.
“We have to work with new generations. It’s something we try to do at the Lumière Institute. Around 60,000 young people go there every year, in screenings of 300 people. It’s a space that gets busy, noisy. But when the film starts, everything changes in a few seconds.”
“It’s been difficult to generate curiosity and send today’s generations to the cinema, where they spend hours without using their cell phones or doing anything else. It’s a way of taking back control of their lives.”
Concerning the craze for the Palme d’Or, Frémaux is indifferent. It’s not the figurine that keeps him from sleeping. “I don’t watch a film because it won an award. When I was young, I didn’t care about films in competition. I preferred to see unknown films. I was proud to see what the general public was missing.”
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