Rive del Nilo - 1911
ABOUT THE FILM : Rive del Nilo
Cineteca di BolognaBanks of the Nile
Year: 1911
With a dual motion a cruise ship and a fishing boat pass one another on the Nile and butlers in turbans set up a wooden gangway. Thanks to a rope and pulley system cows climb skywards then disappear into the hold of the sailing vessel. On the bank, black-haired women rock back and forth, bursting out laughing and showing the first signs of going into a state of trance. Never-before filmed gestures and faces of the people of the Nile succeed one another, uprooted to an unknown, magical world.
The Banks of the Nile is one of the first experiments of film in colour that uses the Kinemacolor process.
Nationality: Italian
Length: 6' 1"
Genre: documentary
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: colour
Composer: Marc Perrone (2009)
Original language: English
A BRIEF HISTORY : Rive del Nilo
The Banks of the Nile comes from a time when the first cameramen travelled the world looking for original images. The everyday lives of the Egyptians living along the Nile are shown. Through simple actions a whole foreign, faraway world unfolds in a hypnotic temporality. This feeling of the unreal is magnified by the coloured images that could be filmed thanks to the Kinemacolor process.
Invented in 1906 by English engineer Georges Albert Smith (1864-1959) and producer Charles Urban (1867-1942), Kinémacolor was the first film-making process in colour exploited commercially. It was a huge success up until the First World War; in Paris, the Edward VII theatre, specially designed for this type of film screened them up until 1913. See the article The invention of cinema in colour in the Documentation space.
In 1890 Charles Urban sold gramophones in Detroit. Through his activity he became interested in Thomas Edison’s inventions (1847 - 1931) and in particular the Kinetoscope. After being Edison’s agent in Europe he founded his own company, the Charles Urban Trading Company in 1903, specialised in producing feature films and documentaries among others with the Kinemacolor that he had to thank for his fame. In 1906 Urban opened a branch in France called Eclipse. Eclipse became one of the main pre-war French production companies but gradually became less influential before being bought in 1923 by Omnium EEG. To diversify his activities Urban founded several companies in the United States of America and England that he grouped together in 1920 under the name Urban Motion Picture Industries Inc. It went bankrupt in 1924.
In 1911 when the promoting of the Kinemacolor was at its height, Urban asked one of his cameramen to bring back pictures that should please and surprise. Egypt was chosen partly because the procedure needed a lot of light because of the filters placed in front of the camera. Apart from the images in colour what is really amazing about The Banks of the Nile are its accurate observations and its strength as a documentary.
The original music for this film was composed by Marc Perrone in 2009.
