The History of Cinema in Torino 🍿 - learning about the art of moving images 🎥

elenahornfilm (64)in #travel • 7 years ago (edited)

🌿Hi Steemians🌿

As we promised, we want to continue our report on the cultural exploration of the beautiful northern Italian city of Torino. In this picture - I caught Elena spying into the erotic collection of stereo cards in the Museum of Cinema.

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But let's start from the beginning. It's a pretty rainy day in Torino and we both had to wrap up a bunch of work before we could go out and explore the city. At least it wasn't yet snowing - because snow in the city is unfortunately less romantic when it turns into a muddy mess.

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The bad weather wasn't bothering us very much. Just for photography it's always nicer to have a little bit of light. Elena took it as a mission to take at least one good picture of me on this journey. But as you can see - she didn't manage. However, I saw a certain beauty in the icy city with its reflecting grounds and rushing residents.

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Our mission of the day is visiting the famous museum of cinema in Turin. It's the highest museum in the world because it's located in a building that was supposed to become a synagogue. We call it: Mole Antonelliana. The building was named after its architect Alessandro Antonelli, who followed his magnificent vision despite all odds.

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It's incredibly tricky to photograph this building in it's entirety. Above all, because we only had a 50mm lens on us.
However, the story of the Mole is relevant because it reminds us of the fact that in Torino, the Jewish community already had full civil rights since 1848 and they were a powerful and striving community that wanted to build a grand Synagogue for its growing population.

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But Antonelli's idea was even too big for the wealthy Jewish community and half way through the construction,
the city had to take over the building and bring it to an end. Today, it hosts one of the best cinema museums in the world.
A ticket will cost you 10€ but I promise to you, it's worth it! Actually, I was arguing with Elena about going to the cinema or to the museum of cinema. Now, the dice is cast. Alia iacta est!

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The museum starts with a chapter about shadow games - which I would have skipped much quicker, if I had known what's still laying ahead of me. The next room is a room on Optics - something I have been fascinated by since a long time. Here you will understand exactly, how your eye is working - but in HUGE scale.

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A deceptive art that outwits the eye and confounds all the senses.
Of course not, as you may guess, this is a camera obscura, a device that consists of a box with a small hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where the scene is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down) and reversed (left to right), but with colour and perspective preserved. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an important stage for photography. In fact, this is essentially a photographic camera without the light-sensitive film able to impress the image (thanks to chemicals) or to digitally capture the image with a sensor like today's photo cameras !

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The Birth Of Cinema

As you go more and more up and reach the next levels - you will learn about the technological rise of cinema. On April 14, 1894, the first Kinetoscope Parlor opened on Broadway. The theater offered the opportunity to watch 35mm films from a series of devices for individual vision. It was not until later that cinema became a collective experience.

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The Kinetoscope Parlors were a huge success both in the United States and in Europe.
It changed the course of chronophorographic studies immensely. Innitially it was conceived only for scientific research but now people discovered its commercial potential.

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Despite many hesitations and doubts, moving pictures triumphed on the silver screen -
first in New York City, then in Atlanta, Berlin and finally in Paris - where supposedly the most famous public projection of all time took place: by Louis and Auguste Lumière at the Grand Café.

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Since then, millions of sets have been built and endless stories have been written for the big screen. You can see a couple of them in the museum. Do you recognise this one? :

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