When Bernard Chardère kicked off Institut Lumière’s first season in 1983, he let all the usual suspects come into play. It was a crowning moment for a man who had founded the magazine “Positif” in Lyon in 1952 with some high school friends and who had a mission to encourage counterculture, including film, “anywhere but in Paris”. Without a single subsidy (he loves repeating this to better claim his right), he founded film clubs, started magazines, edited books, and with the painter Max Schoendorff had launched CICL. The challenge here was rather exciting: reclaim origins, pay homage to a place of history,  provide a film institution to the city of Lyon, which, without knowing it, was home to this site, the only one of its kind in the world. The path for Premier-Film, “as its name indicates,” writes Bernard Chardère. Backed by a small team of believers and with the help of experienced French and European film archives, he launched the Institut Lumière at full speed.

Thierry Frémaux, excerpt from the Centre Pompidou’s tribute to the Institut Lumière in 1995.

A journalist (especially for “L’Express”), critic (he founded the magazine “Positif”), writer (he is an expert on Prévert, the Lumière brothers…), energetic film club organizer, director of short and medium length films, and producer (with his company Les Films du Galion), Bernard Chardère is first and foremost an untiring, committed and passionate cinephile. In 1975 he fought to save the Château Lumière from destruction and then renovated it. He created the National Photography Foundation, which he ran from 1978 to 1982. In 1982, the Institut Lumière was officially founded. Bernard Chardère became its director, and Bertrand Tavernier was nominated president. Raymond Chirat enlarged the massive collection (thousands of books, dossiers, photos, posters…). For ten years Chardère was the life behind the institute, developing exhibitions, screenings and events, often with the help of his wife Alice Chardère.