These are three consecutive short films: 51 secs., 50 secs., and 49 secs. All b&w, and silent.
Production : Lumière, catalogue nos. 771-773
Source : CNC at the BnF
These three ‘views’, as the short Lumière films were known, were shot in December 1897, when a group of Sinhalese performers visited Lyons, where the Lumière company was located. They have been tentatively identified as the work of Alexandre Promio, the Italian-born operator who shot around a quarter of the total number of 1428 ‘views’ that the Lumière company produced.
In the first ‘view’, six male dancers in long skirts and turbans, and bearing knives, dance in a circle around a central person striking small cymbals. A drummer with a long drum stands to the left. The film is shot from single wide static position, at about 5 metres. The second and third ‘views’ are of the same dancers and dance, with only slight variation.
These ‘views’ could possibly be the first moving images taken of a South Asian cultural phenomenon, and perhaps even of South Asian people more generally.
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