Repas de bébé

Repas de Bebe was one of the films on the bill of the Lumiere brothers' first exhibition of motion pictures for a paying audience. The basement room of the Hotel Salon Indien the brothers hired for the occasion was half-empty on the first ever cinema screening - but the second night was a sell-out. Of course, by today's standards most of the film's appear quite crude and this one is no great shakes but it does capture a tender family moment as Auguste Lumiere and his wife feed their baby son. It's a shot that's been repeated millions of times since by anyone who ever had a family and owned a cine camera/video camera or mobile phone, and as such there's a certain poignancy to it.