ABSTRACT
Cinema distinguished itself as the twentieth century’s genuinely international medium. Far more than literature, so dependent on transla - tion, films from the outset were watched by peoples in the most far-flung areas. Hardly had they invented the cinématographe than the Lumière brothers sent it around the world. This apparatus-capturing, processing, and projecting images-was carried like Stendhal’s mirror on the backs of operators from region to region where people gazed at pictures of themselves and their surroundings taken just a few days or weeks before. This same footage was then shipped back to Paris which in 1900 functioned not only as a production source but also as a depot and distribution center. Imagine footage shot, say, in the Caucasus packaged for exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and vice versa. Many parts of the globe were touched by the cinématographe, each responding to this international phenomenon at its own speed, each stamping it with its own image and its own temporality.
