Documentary in the Digital Age

Introduction: Life on the Run

There are very few clearly definable turning points in history. One of those rare moments happened in Paris in December 1895, when the Lumière brothers introduced their brand new moving picture show to a paying audience. That was the day that cinema was born. All the experiments, the invention of different systems to project moving pictures in different parts of the world, had been of great interest, technologically, but cinema requires an audience. And that first cinema show, run by the Lumières, was pure documentary. They described their scenes of everyday life, filmed around their home and factory near Lyons, as ‘life on the run’. I have always thought this a perfect description of those vibrant fragments of ...