Stremer Makes Movies
When filmmaking began, so much of what we now take for granted did not yet exist. Movies did not tell long stories, the camera did not move, there were no special lights, and the art/science of editing did not exist. For the most part, the camera operator set up his (and it was almost always a “he”) camera at a relatively close distance to the subject and began to crank. Still, it would be a while before camera operators began to shoot the “close-up.”
Once the camera was operating, whoever the subject was would start performing. It might be a dancer, or a strongman flexing his muscles, a kiss, or a sneeze. The early films we talked about previously, such as the arrival of the train in Paris, or the footage of workers leaving the Lumière factory at the end of the day, are examples of this. The Lumière brothers dubbed them “actualities.” Aside from those one minute actualities, producers would string together a number of shots of real events to make longer films. As we wrote earlier, the first film shown in Russia was Scenes from Coronation of the Czar… an editing together of a number of actualities of the day.
Another early example of audience thirst for films of actual events comes from 1897, the 100 minute long film of the championship boxing match between “Gentleman Jim” Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons won. Here is actual film from the Fitzsimmons punch that felled Corbett.
While there is no record of any on the territory of Belarus prior to 1907, we can be reasonably certain that any number of traveling projectionists came through Minsk, Vitebsk, and other cities and enticed audiences in to see various films, whether actualities, story films, or documentaries.
Once Richard Stremer opened his theater, he set out to meet the needs of his Belarusian audiences to see films of their cities.
In the summer of 1908, his cameramen filmed the training of the Minsk Free Fire Society for 18 days, then premiered a fall film, MVPO Maneuvers. On December 8, 1908, a new film of their own production Excavator — The Infernal Machine Behind the Brest Railway Station was presented in the Stremer cinema. It was a reported as resounding success with the Minsk public.1
Minsk Free Fire Society, 1908.
Source: https://blizko.by/notes/kak-tushili-pozhary-v-minske-130-let-nazad
Stremer, as we wrote earlier, was not limited to Belarus. As film historian Semeon Ginzburg wrote:
Under the brand of R. Stremer, plots appeared on the screen that had not only local, but also all-Russian significance.2”
Semon Ginzburg
Back in Belarusian territory, on December 15, 1908, another documentary film made by Stremer, Fire in the City of Minsk on Police Street also premiered in his theater.
In 1911, Stremer cameramen shot “Polish Temple Feast in Kalvaria in Minsk”, for the Catholic population.3 Then, they shot Flights of the Russian Aviator Utochkin over Komarovskoe Field, Train Crash at Rudniki Station and 200th Anniversary of Tsarskoye Selo.4
Eden electro-theater in Minsk, 1908.
Source: https://brod.kz/articles/starejshie-kinoteatry-stran-sovetskogo-soyuza/
And the films themselves! Cine-Phono reported the films Stremer was showing at his Parisian Illusion. Note how many are some kind of documentary, and how few suggest themselves as story films. Most of these films, too, were certainly imported from France by representatives for Pathé or Gaumont:
• Beekeeping,
• The Labors of Hercules,
• Leading old men,
• Leading shoes,
• Sausage makers of the twentieth century,
• Greatness and the fall of the hat,
• Grisha's whim,
• Magic lantern,
• Sport in Switzerland,
• Rubber man,
• A stubborn dog,
• Crime under the snow,
• Bed on wheels,
• A short-sighted hunter,
• Catching frogs,
• Car Race in France 1907,
• The Red Ghost.5
Auto Race Car Circuit Seine France Grand Prix 1907, Weigel Racing Postcard.
Source: https://www.hippostcard.com/listing/auto-race-car-circui-seine-france-grand-prix-1907-weigel-racing-postcard/33340009
On March 1. Electro-Biograph:
• The Highest Review at the Winter Palace,
• The Magic flint,
• Daughter of a robber.
• Ingenious stubble,
• Adventure with the groom.6
Cine-phono kept readers up to date on what was being shown in Minsk in its March 15, 1908 issue.
At the Parisian Illusion:
• Metal factory in Creusot,
• Struggle,
• Orangutan-kidnapping woman,
• Inventor,
• Unpolished talent,
• The lady has a desire,
• Fire waterfall.
At the Electro-biograph:
• In the center of Africa,
• Sanctity of the banner,
• Cave of the sorceress,
• Firefighters maneuvers,
• A lesson on skates.7
Cine-phono magazine, 1913.
Source: https://electro.nekrasovka.ru/books/6151474/pages/8
But what could compare with his July offerings (per Cine-Phono) of Stremer’s Electro-biograph:
• The sea during a storm,
• The daughter of a counterfeiter,
• The carriage is subject to hallucination,
• Nero,
• Strange,
• Wives of capital,
• I won a pig.8
Belarusian documentaries, French documentaries, or French films, it appears that Belarusian cinema-goers could always be entertained.
1 1prof.by Полное копирование материалов возможно только с письменного разрешения редакции https://1prof.by/news/v-mire/vo-vremya-pervyh-pokazov-ljudi-v-panike-vybegali-iz-zala-s-chego-nachinalos-kino-v-belarusi
2 Гинзбург С. Кинематография дореволюционной России, Издательство Искусство, Москва 1963, стр. 44. (Ginzburg S. “Cinematography of Pre-Revolutionary Russia” Publishing House Art, Moscow 1963, p. 44.)
3 Ibid. p. 62
4 Ibid.
5 Cine-Phono, Issue 7, February 15, 1908, p. 11.
6 Cine-Phono, Issue 8, March 1, 1908, p. 10.
7 Cine-Phono, Issue 9, March 15, 1908, p. 10.
8 Cine-Phono, Issue 17, July 15, 1908, p. 9.