When the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, brought out their Cinématograph in 1895, film, heretofore the province of the Kinetoscope, "came out of the box" and the cinema as we know it was born. The Cinématograph was not only a motion picture camera-light and compact, enabling moving pictures to be shot in any location-but a projector as well. The first public film screening took place in Paris on December 28, 1895. But the Lumières were more than inventors, they were in every sense cinéastes, in particular Louis, who brought his skill at still photography to the cinema. He demonstrated to the world what the art of the cinema was about, using many inventive elements of film language including resourceful framing and lighting, selective angles, and even traveling shots. His passion and pleasure was to record the passions and pleasures of the French people (particularly the bourgeoisie); most of these early films are actualities, showing the fabric of everyday life. But others are enacted, with much humor, such as Feeding the Baby or the much imitated Teasing the Gardener. Moreover, as early as 1896, Lumière recruited a score of assistants to shoot footage of people and events around the world. Thus in the oeuvre of one "primitive" we see the birth of film realism, of mise-en-scène, and of the newsreel and documentary. Today these films are fascinating not for their primitivism but for their realism, humor and striking visual beauty. Vincent Pinel, Archive Conservator at the Cinémathèque Française, has compiled tonight's program of rare and restored Lumière films from the archives of the Cinémathèque. Included are films of Louis Lumière, filmmaker; Lumière's cameramen across France; daily life in France: at work and at play; the first actualities and the first news reports; and the advent of mise-en-scène in both comic and historical scenes.