1904: FAR/NEAR, SIMILAR/DIFFERENT

This programme is arranged for experimental purposes, enabling the audience to compare similarities and differences. First, there are four surviving prints of Excursion en Italie, a cinematic Grand Tour in 12 tableaux presenting tourist highlights from Genoa, via Venice and Vesuvius, to Rome. All different and none like the original version that premiered in Paris in May 1904. The copy from Cineteca di Bologna lacks the beginning (En rade de Gêne, 12 m – the only lost scene of the film) and the end. It is impossible to say whether these parts were intentionally cut or if they went lost, which happens easily with film beginnings and endings. For the short Pont des soupirs and Rome moderne et antique from the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the producer Pathé Frères is responsible; in its 1905 catalogue six segments of Excursion en Italie appear as separate films. The Australian version includes another film, La Fête des gondoles à Venise (Eclipse 1906-1907); it was almost certainly inserted by the exhibitor Corrick, an itinerant showman. Second, as a contrast to these travelogues with their measured pace and contemplative gaze at distant landscapes and cityscapes, four very short films are presented. Close-up faces and surprising changes irresistibly capture the audience’s attention, and the stripper even winks at us and holds up the flea she caught so that we can see it better. Third, as a finale, a different Venice, not postcards for armchair tourists by French professional Camille Legrand, but what Venetian Giancarlo Stucky captured when he filmed the people and places of his hometown with the very first amateur camera, the Gaumont-Demenÿ Chrono de Poche, bought in 1900. The approximately 70 undated 15mm films from his estate were restored in 20182020; here five of them will be screened.

Mariann Lewinsky

Piano accompaniment by André Desponds.

Discover the other films screening

In this screening

Entr’acte

Copy sourced from

FESTIVAL 2026

Programme

Sections

How to join the festival