I was lucky to see the Lumiere Brothers' 130 films in Anthology
today. I had seen some of them here and there but was not aware of
the value of what Lumieres had created until today.

First, I see on the web that only one of the brothers, Louis, is
considered to be the director behind these films. However, Anthology
defines the filmmaker as 'The Lumieres Brothers'. I would be very
happy if someone can inform me on how they worked and why Louis
can/should be considered the director. It is also very much O.K. if
you can direct me to some source where I can learn about this.

Anyway, I think that almost all of the films are beautiful, and some
of them are simply unbelievable.
It is obvious that Louis (or both him and Auguste) felt every
movement recorded on the camera very deeply, which is much more than
what most directors that followed him (or them) achieved. It seems
that most people who came afterwards took the camera, its capacities
and its limitations for granted.

Most of my favorites are the ones where they just record the streets
and the people walking around (or even better, people changing their
movements after they notice the camera) and the ones where the
camera moves (attached to a boat or a train). Anyone can put a
camera in the middle of a city and record stuff but very few people
can put it in such a way to record movements as dynamic and as
complex as these. I wish I had the chance to see the films a few
more times.

Beauty and complexity are not qualities you would really expect from
the first director ever. Or actually, I guess one might make the
opposite statement and assume that the first director was bound to
feel the cinema very deeply. This is all speculation of course.

Most of my least favorites (not that they were bad or anything) were
the ones where the camera recorded a parade of something
spectacular. Those seem to be more interested in showing 'some
interesting things' to the audiences. I'd like to hear if somebody
disagrees with this.

Finally, I know that this has been noted in a few other places but I
cannot not be impressed by the fact that the first people who used
the camera were called 'Lumiere'. ('light' in English, as most of
you probably know.)

Looking forward to any responses...

Yoel