Lumière, Le Cinéma! 2025. Directed by Thierry Frémaux

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Lumière, Le Cinéma! 2025. France. Directed by Thierry Frémaux. Courtesy Janus Films

Lumière, Le Cinéma! 2025. France. Directed by Thierry Frémaux. New York premiere. DCP courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 105 min.

Witness the birth of cinema with the New York premiere theatrical run of Thierry Frémaux’s Lumière, Le Cinéma! (2025), about the pioneering achievements of the French entrepreneurs Auguste and Louis Lumière in the late 19th century. Frémaux, the director of the Cannes Film Festival, the Institut Lumière, and the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France, the birthplace of these remarkable brothers, brings a wealth of insight, history, and revelation to this journey back to the 1890s, when the Lumière Company, with their astonishing new invention, the cinematograph, made it possible for audiences to voyage around the world in moving pictures for the first time. Featuring gorgeous new restorations of more than 100 comedies, dramas, and travelogues—some famous, some forgotten, and some never before seen—and set to an evocative score of period music by Gabriel Fauré, this wondrous documentary enables contemporary viewers to imagine an entirely new language of storytelling unfolding film by glorious film.

This film accompanies MoMA Presents: Lumière, Le Cinéma!.

Past events

Thu, Mar 26, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Wed, Mar 25, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Tue, Mar 24, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Mon, Mar 23, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Sun, Mar 22, 4:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Sat, Mar 21, 6:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Fri, Mar 20, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

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