Precisely during Christmas, on December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers screened for the first time a film, The exit of the Lumière factory in Lyon, before a group of people gathered in the Indian Salon of the Grand Café in Paris.
That documentary film, which lasted just 46 seconds and had no sound, is considered the first production in the history of cinema.
Since then, the seventh art has evolved in the way it is created –from that first cinematograph, an invention of the French brothers, to digital cinema–, in its language, or with the creation of different cinematographic genres.
Of course, 125 years are also necessary to make many films.
A young Iranian, Shahin Sepehri, wanted to pay tribute to the history of cinema with a short video that lasts just one minute and that collects scenes from some of the most famous feature films of the 20th and 21st century to the beat of a waltz melody, with films like
Nosferatu, The Graduate, Fight Club
and
Taxi Driver,
among others.
Although he published it in September, the video has been shared many times on social networks in recent weeks, it may even have reached you through WhatsApp, as happened to the Twitter user @h_miguez, who later shared it in a tweet on last December 18.
See this post on Instagram
A post shared by shahin sepehri (@shahin_sepehrri)
Sepehri, 26, is surprised that his video has transpired from his Instagram profile.
"I published it without any intention, simply to honor this art," he tells
Verne
by email.
The young Iranian studies film at the University of Tehran and had already made other similar videos about his country's cinema and about his favorite Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami.
Sepehri's video shows different movie scenes in which the real setting is maintained, but where the protagonists are animated characters with a style reminiscent of rotoscopy, an ancient animation technique invented more than a century ago by another pair of brothers. (the Fleischers) that, by means of a machine called a “rotoscope”, allows to replace the frames of a real film with drawings traced on each frame.
Currently, there are digital programs with which this effect can be achieved.
These are what Sepehri uses for his videos.
Above: The Devil's Seed and Taxi driver.
Bottom: The Dark Knight and The Good, the Ugly, and the Bad
The characters that appear in this short tribute to cinema also have no faces, which makes it more difficult to identify each film.
"I like that minimalist touch of using little line and I also wanted to propose that game of guessing movies, that's why I don't put the title of each one either," he says.
Some Twitter users have already provided the list of movies in order of appearance and Sepehri has confirmed that it is correct.
😀 pic.twitter.com/Zwvf3Qb0Pt
- ╣Rafa Rod |
Paws & Tails Prods.
(@Ralphy_Rolphy) December 20, 2020
The young Iranian says that he has seen the 45 films that appear in the video.
"Some I chose because they are my favorites, like
Desiring to love
with which I cry a lot, and others because they are very popular and probably everyone knows them."
He also jokes about one of the comments he received for his video.
"A man precisely told me that he had bad taste choosing films, when in reality my selection tries to represent all tastes, that is the beauty of cinema, that it is made for everyone," he says.
Following the publication of her video on Instagram, Sepehri has received some job offers.
"Nothing to do with cinema, it is a music video for a famous singer from my country, Faramarz Aslani," he says.
But due to his passion for the seventh art, he ensures that he will continue to create more animations like this in the future.
Above: Pulp Fiction and Forget about me.
Bottom: Singing in the Rain and A Clockwork Orange
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