*Post intended for after Tuesday night's reading but post didn't submit*

Michael Allen presents the concept of nineteenth-century Egyptomania and how the French fascination with the filmed footage of Alexandria, the Great Pyramid, and the Sphinx, captured cultural attention amid a time when cinéma du monde was bringing nearly every culture to the screens of Paris. With steamboats, the Suez Canal and trains physically connected the world more than ever before, elite Parisians could travel physically further than ever before in addition to being able to see more of the world on screen. So I ask why the immense interest in Egypt in particular?

As written in Deserted histories: The Lumière Brothers, thepyramids and early film form, “When Roberts visited various sites throughout the Holy Lands, he looked upon them through a given frame-work: their significance derived from the stories and traditions that made them meaningful. For the artist as for his contemporary reviewer, the scenes come alive by virtue of what is known of them through knowledge of history and scripture.” (Allen 164) 

Egypt and all it contained was a space previously only mythologized through scripture or painting. Parisians experienced Egypt only through second hand accounts prior to the release of Les Pyramides (vue générale). Egypt in particular was a sanctified land regarded as divine to many, and with the advent of the cinematic record people could witness this holy land with their own eyes. They had a first hand account of a divine space only previously mythologized. 

Paris in the late 19th Century was a city undergoing vast and rapid change. It was the peak of modernity, with innovation being the pinnacle of society. Society tends to act as a pendulum, and alongside the push for modernity there was a desire for the simplicity of the past. Through the Egyptian travelogues, viewers could be transported not only through space but through time as they are taken back to an divine antiquity.

Schwartz discusses early transport films as “based in actual, planetary geography rather than the magical and fantastic worlds of filmmakers such as Georges Méliès (Schwartz 130). These travelogues were the first visual proof that an audience could see to confirm their preexisting beliefs about these mythologized places. This echos today’s cinematic form of documentary, a visual medium rooted in fact with a desire to educate. However as soon as the medium presents a promise of objective observation through the eye of a subjective camera planted in one spot, recording 50 seconds of what naturally occurs, that promise is broken. In the 1906 film, Le tour du monde d’un policier, “presented an elaborate fiction made by splicing actualité films into fictional tableaux.” (Schwartz 130) Audiences at the time were likely not educated or aware of the implications of blurring the lines between an objective cinematic observation and a staged scene for entertainment. That is if they cared to look past the novelty of a moving breathing image of a foreign place. Considering the racial stereotypes perpetuated by the cinéma du monde, this film marks one of the first instance of the entertainment versus education debate that is still ongoing over a century later.

Some questions posed by the reading:
When is the discussion of ethics in cinema started?
When do these foreign nation acquire film equipment of their own to start establishing their own cinematic identity?
When did the fictional form overtake that of observation/documentary?