ABSTRACT
Workers Leaving the Factory was the first film ever to be shown to the public. The short film had been shot by the Lumiere brothers and it was screened to a specially invited elite audience in Paris. As its title promised, the astonished audience watched workers leaving a factory. The factory in Lyon actually produced photographic plates for cameras and it belonged to the Lumiere brothers. The struggle for control over the cinematic means of production on the terrain of culture is part of and develops in relation to the broader struggle between the classes over the means of production as a whole. The double contradiction between intra-capitalist competition leading to monopoly capitalism and inter-class conflict between capital and labour, was also to play out on a catastrophic world scale in the form of the First World War.
