Amongst the numerous cinematographic devices that circulated in 1896 figures the Cinématographe perfectionné, patented by Henri Joly on March 17, 1896 and marketed by Ernest Normandin beginning in the autumn of 1896. Presented as “the only one which doesn’t damage films” and “without any vibration or flickering”, what later became known as the Cinématographe Joly-Normandin seduced several exhibitors in France and abroad (United States, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal) despite its peculiar square format (35mm, five perforations per frame).
Unfortunately for Henri Joly and Ernest Normandin, their cinematograph was the one used the day when the terrible fire at the Bazar de la Charité occurred in Paris on May 4, 1897. Even if it was acknowledged that the cinematograph was not the origin of the fire, it seems nevertheless to have made life difficult for their apparatus and led the two engineers to change the name of the device.
No catalogue of films made with the Joly-Normandin system seems to have survived, but we can state with some certainty that (at least) a hundred films were made with this system, most of these shot before the Bazar de la Charité disaster.
Thanks to several collections that rediscovered in Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, about sixty films produced with their system have been identified and preserved.
The most important collection (forty-two films) comes from the Cinemateca Portuguesa which, in 2005, received as a deposit from the Photographia – Museu Vincentes the collection of João Anacleto Rodrigues, a businessman and amateur photographer from Funchal (Madeira), who purchased a cinématographe Joly-Normandin in March 1897. Between May and December the same year, he organized sessions in Funchal and in the archipelago.
In this collection not only films were saved, but also original programmes, such as those from the first screenings organized in mid-May 1897 at the Teatro D. Maria Pia of Funchal.

Camille Blot-Wellens