Institut Lumière

The Institut Lumière is a French nonprofit organization headquartered in Lyon, dedicated to the promotion, preservation, and dissemination of cinematic heritage. Founded in 1982, it operates as a museum and cultural center honoring Auguste and Louis Lumière, inventors of the cinématographe and pioneers of cinema. The institute is situated in the Monplaisir quarter of Lyon's 8th arrondissement, on the very site where the Lumière brothers conceived their revolutionary camera and where one of the earliest motion pictures, La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon, was filmed. Under the artistic direction of Thierry Frémaux and with Irène Jacob serving as president since 2021, the Institut Lumière functions as both a guardian of film history and an active presenter of contemporary cinema, hosting daily screenings, the annual Festival Lumière, and maintaining extensive archives.

The Institut Lumière was established in 1982 by Bernard Chardère and Maurice Trarieux-Lumière, the grandson of Louis Lumière. Its creation fulfilled a municipal ambition dating back to 1966, when the city of Lyon had commissioned collector Paul Génard to develop a film museum and intended to acquire the Lumière company premises. However, the Lumière heirs initially sold the property to the Ilford Photo group in 1967. Ilford occupied the site until 1976, when it relocated to Saint-Priest and sold the factory and villa to the city of Lyon. After renovation in 1978, the Fondation Nationale de la Photographie was installed there, remaining until its dissolution in 1993. The Institut Lumière took possession in 1982, with further major works in 1998 creating the Hangar du Premier-Film cinema space. The rehabilitation was entrusted to architect Pierre Colboc and chief architect of historic monuments Didier Repellin, with scenography by the agency dUCKS Scéno. Bertrand Tavernier served as president until his death in March 2021, when actress Irène Jacob succeeded him on 30 September 2021. Thierry Frémaux, also delegate general of the Cannes Film Festival since 2004, has directed the institute since 1995.

The Institut Lumière's holdings encompass a broad spectrum of cinematic heritage. The Lumière film collection comprises 1,425 original films, restored in 1998 by the Archives françaises du film of the Centre national de la cinématographie. This collection was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2005. Since 2014, a selection of 130 Lumière films has undergone 4K digital restoration by the laboratories Éclair in France and Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, with releases on Blu-ray and DVD featuring commentary by Thierry Frémaux. The institute's conservation mandate extends beyond films to include screenplays, books, photographs, posters, cinema and pre-cinema apparatus, and technical literature. The documentation center holds extensive archival materials including thematic dossiers and periodicals. Since 1992, the institute has maintained a publishing partnership with Actes Sud for film history books. The institute also owns three additional art-house and experimental cinema venues elsewhere in Lyon.

The Musée Lumière, housed across two floors of the Villa Lumière, presents the inventions of Auguste and Louis Lumière through interactive displays and original apparatus. Exhibits include the Cinématographe, the device used for the first public film screening on 28 December 1895 at the Salon indien du Grand Café in Paris; the Photorama; the Autochrome color process; the Ètiquette Bleue photographic plate; 3D and 75 mm projection systems; photostéréosynthèse; and the mechanical hand. The museum's collections draw primarily from the holdings of collector Paul Génard and the Lumière family archive. On the upper floors of the villa, in what was once Antoine Lumière's painting studio, the Raymond Chirat Documentation Center provides 22 traditional workstations and 4 computer stations for researchers, with collections networked to specialized libraries including the Bibliothèque du film and Cinémathèque de Toulouse. The institute's magazine, Rue du Premier-Film, documents premieres, festivals, and film projects until 2015.

The Institut Lumière occupies the Villa Lumière and adjacent former factory site at 25 rue du Premier-Film in Lyon's Monplaisir quarter. The Villa Lumière is a maison de maître built between 1899 and 1902 for Antoine Lumière, father of the inventors, on what is now Place Ambroise-Courtois. Of the original Lumière factory complex, almost nothing survives except a portion of the hangar, which was restored over two years. The Hangar du Premier-Film cinema, opened in October 1998, seats 269 and is equipped with projectors for 16 mm, 35 mm, and 4K digital formats, with a screen 13 meters wide and digital sound. Following renovation works from January to October 2023, the villa's basement now contains two additional cinemas of 70 and 64 seats respectively, replacing a former 98-seat room. The exterior features the Mur des Cinéastes, created in 1982 and restored in August 2021, a Lyon equivalent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with copper plaques bearing the names of directors invited to the institute.

The Institut Lumière is located at 25 rue du Premier-Film, Lyon 8e, in the Monplaisir quarter, accessible via the Place Ambroise-Courtois. The site is owned by the city of Lyon and operated by the Institut Lumière as a nonprofit association under French law of 1901. Visitors can access the museum, daily film screenings, and research facilities. The Hangar du Premier-Film presents daily screenings on its large screen, with each seat bearing a plaque naming a celebrated filmmaker. The institute organizes L'Été en Cinémascope each summer, free open-air screenings of film classics on Place Ambroise-Courtois. Since 2009, it has hosted the annual Festival Lumière in October, presenting more than 200 films across Lyon and its metropolitan area, and awarding the Prix Lumière for lifetime achievement to a major filmmaker. Additional facilities include a photo gallery on the Presqu'île at 3 rue de l'Arbre-Sec, and three art-house cinemas in other Lyon neighborhoods.