Cannes Chief Thierry Frémaux on the origins of filmmaking in ‘Lumière, le Cinema!’
The Treatment
KCRW
4.6 • 656 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than 125 years ago, brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière invented the cinematograph, a precursor to the movie camera. Their contributions to modern filmmaking are enshrined at the Institute Lumière in France.
As a scholar of film, Thierry Frémaux, director of the Institute Lumière and Cannes Film Festival, was drawn to telling the Lumière brothers’ story. His first film as director is 'Lumière, le Cinema!,' in which he narrates a series of shorts created by the Lumière brothers and explains the significance of their invention. Frémaux talks to Elvis about why he wanted to tell this story, why the Lumière brothers' invention of the cinematograph was so consequential, and how the films they created are still relevant today.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment. |
| 0:04.5 | Welcome to the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest, Tieri, Fremont, is the artistic director of Institute Lumiereiere and the Lumiere Film Festival. |
| 0:22.6 | He has made his first full-length feature film as director, which he also does the voiceover for. |
| 0:29.6 | He does the audio commentary. |
| 0:30.6 | And he is, of course, known to us as the artistic director and delegate general of the Cannes Film Festival. |
| 0:36.6 | Tieri, thank you so much for being here. |
| 0:38.3 | Your film is Lumiere La Cinema, and it asks so many questions and does such a great job of taking us |
| 0:45.3 | from the birth of film and the birth of so many genres of film. |
| 0:50.3 | And I think what's so interesting to me about the film is that there's so many things |
| 0:54.7 | in this movie that are antecedents of what we see today. I mean, there's one point where you |
| 0:59.3 | show a Lumier footage of a cat playing, and that could be a video on TikTok, couldn't it? |
| 1:05.9 | Yeah, yeah. And especially the timing of the TikTok, well, TikTok is like five, 10 seconds, |
| 1:13.0 | Lumier is 50 seconds. |
| 1:14.6 | But yes, you're right. |
| 1:16.5 | We can see a Lumia film and then at the end get the desire to see another one, |
| 1:21.7 | and then another one, and then another one. |
| 1:24.3 | The timing of the Lumia programs or even Edison programs or Melius program at the end |
| 1:29.8 | at the beginning when the film were short and it was permanent excitement of watching more and more |
| 1:37.4 | because the curiosity of the world was so strong that cinema gave that, feed that desire to people. |
| 1:46.7 | Well, it's interesting is that we still have a word in English that we use that takes us |
| 1:52.5 | back to cinematograph, that is cinematographer. |
| 1:55.0 | So we're still using that word, and in essence, we're still using that idea in the making |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.