Lumière Brothers - The Serpentine Dance (c.1899)

Shot and hand-colored - frame by frame - at the end of the 19th Century. Still captivating today, but just imagine what it must have been like to watch an image move and transform like this in 1899! A beautiful example of the earliest cinematic ART. One of my three favorite Lumière films which I've uploaded.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[ISuperLoveMovies]

The video is 44 seconds, and if the frame rate is say 16 then: 44*16 = 704 frames to color.. by hand. D:

[317East32nd]

@ISuperLoveMovies, nice calculation! And had you told the person painting the frames that well over a century later tens of thousands of people all over the world would be watching the same film in the comfort of their own homes, they might even have thrown in a frame 705, gratis. Thanks for viewing!

[KawhackitaRag]

I swear, if only the guys who build model structures out of toothpicks would spend their time hand-coloring copies of black-and-white movies... the world would be a better place.

[317East32nd]

@KawhackitaRag, I smiled when I read that!

[Lucila Vilela]

Who's talking??

[317East32nd]

Bertrand Tavernier, film director (and President of the Intitut Lumière).

[Cyrilla Behrndt]

PAPINTA Visionary Of Modern Dance The Flame Dance. The Fire Dance Danse Serpentine Dream Of Light (Newspaper Review The Republic 8.11.1902) Butterfly Dance Myriad Dace Mirror Dance Yellow Dragon Study In Red Serpentine Dance, Terpjichovean Dream Kaliedoscope Dream The Living Picture Dance Florordora (Newspaper review NY Evening Telegram 11.17.1900) Crystal Maze Lily Dance Panjandrum Papinta’s Skirt Dances (Lewis And Clark Papinta Skirt Dances pub. 1900) Dramatic Mirror

[tangorolza]

spaz

[dancalcam12]

@colinchick69

[Cyrilla Behrndt]

Papinta. The Flame Dancer. Caroline Hipple Holpin.

First to be filmed by the Vitascope Lumiere and International Film Company-perofmed in US-Europe. Papinta was the highest paid perfomer in history up to this time in history. Papinta Vaudeville"The Mirror Dance".Papinta died on stage in Dusseldorf 1907

"Before The Nickelodeon" Edwin and The Edison Manufacturing Company, by Author Charles Musser

Concord Historical Society

Novel "Concord" by Joel Harris

Martinez Historical Society

[Automatic Jack]

Fuck hardcore dancing, this is BADASS

[EvelynM91]

This is fabulous!

[cyillaflowers]

The Dancer is Caroline Hipple. The Flame Dancer. Papinta.

[OriginalGrasshopper]

Simply mesmerizing! Blows away all the CGI crap of today. This was *real* art! 👍

[Rhissanna]

It's not Loie Fuller? I suppose the Butterfly was so popular it must have been imitated a lot.