Gabriel Veyre. Las aventuras de un operador Lumière alrededor del mundo

If life were measured in intensities rather than duration, that of Gabriel Veyre (Lyon, 1871) would be among the fullest, like that of Jean Vigo, Henry Purcell or Arthur Rimbaud.

Destined to become a provincial pharmacist, he met the Lumière brothers at a very young age and was hired as an operator. He took the cinematograph to Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, China, Indochina and Japan. He retired at the age of thirty, but received a call from the Sultan of Morocco to initiate him into the mysteries of cinematograph (my film En la alcoba del sultán, 2024, recounts his extraordinary adventures).

This programme includes some of his finest Lumière films and his final colour footage shot in Morocco — a diary of a farewell journey through the country that adopted him and where he lived for forty years. And, above all, Le Village de Namo, which is probably the most beautiful film ever made, according to Tavernier.

Curious by nature, like any good scientist, he was so short that he had no room for doubt; an inventor, adventurer and romantic, his images foreshadow those of Cornell Capa, Eisenstein and Yasujirō Ozu. Full of intuition and modernity, he knew how to look at men and women without exoticism, capturing their otherness, with a pictorial sensibility and taste worthy of Hergé. He loved children and horses, films and photography above all else, perhaps with the exception of a bottle of wine and a good chat. Don’t miss it.

Presentation by Javier Rebollo