FROM THE HISTORY OF CROATIAN CINEMA
Alexandre Promio, Cameraman of Société Lumière, in Croatia 1898
(In Search of a Lost Film between Audience and Several Countries)
The text gives us information unknown
until now about films made by Alexandre Promio, cameraman
of Société Lumière, in Croatia in 1898. This disclosure
— noticed by accident thanks to the retrospective catalogue
made by the Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2000 — moves
the date of the oldest Croatian film recordings on the
Croatian soil six years back. Until now The Port of
Šibenik was considered to be the oldest motion picture. The
Port of Šibenik was until recently attributed to Stanislaw
Noworyta but in 2006 it was justly attributed to Frank
Mottershaw, a cameraman from Sheffield, and it was recognized
as a fragment of his larger 1904 film The Coronation
of King Peter I of Serbia and a Ride through Serbia, Novi-Pazar,
Montenegro and Dalmatia. The author followed the film’s
track to the Cinémathèque Française and to the Association
Frères Lumière where he found as many as seven films recorded
on the 28 and 29 of April, 1898 in Pula and Šibenik, the
ports of Austro-Hungarian navy. The text describes the
seven films which are all dedicated to army manoeuvres
and navy practice on sailing-ships: Ships Arrival and
Anchorage (Arrivee d’un bateau et mise a l’ancre, cat.
Nr. 836), Salute from the Mast (Salut dans les vergues, cat.
Nr.837), Preparation for the Combat (Branle-bas de combat, cat.
Nr. 838), Disembarkation and Rifle Fire (Debarquement
et le feu de mousqeterie, cat. Nr. 839), Regatta
(start) (Regates (aller), cat. Nr. 840), Regatta
(return) (Regates (retour), cat. Nr. 841), Sailor’s
Race (Course de matelots, cat. Nr. 842).
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