Explore the first exhibition of the "new" National Maritime Museum in Paris, a joint creation of the National Maritime Museum and the French Cinematheque.
Prepare yourself for a captivating journey, punctuated by exceptional pieces, plunging into the heart of the fascinating and tumultuous imagination of maritime cinema.
From magic lanterns of the 18th century to the film "Oceans" by Jacques Perrinand Jacques Cluzaud, via Marey, the Lumière brothers, Méliès, Windjammer, Le Crabe-Tambour, and even Titanic, the exhibition reveals the importance of the sea in the cinematographic universe, as well as as the attraction of filmmakers and technicians for this theme.
Date: 13 December 2023 to May 5, 2024
Location: National Maritime Museum in Paris
Desire: Nature, Immersive experience, Cinema
Immersed in an ambitious scenography, embark on a maritime journey, poetic and surprising, in the company of more than 300 works - costumes, posters, paintings, machines, objects, photographs and film extracts - mainly from the Cinémathèque collections French.
The exhibition begins by exploring how imagery and imagination linked to the sea have influenced literature, entertainment, photography and painting since the end of the 18th century. The first films on the underwater world then revealed an unknown, astonishing and fabulous world. The beginnings of cinema, in the 1920s, took up these themes successfully, exploring the motifs of travel, shipwrecks and underwater monsters. Exceptional pieces from the 18th and 19th centuries, such as objects used in fairgrounds, at the theater or in private salons, are presented: magic lanterns, optical boxes, optical toys, shadow puppets, etc. p>
Over the years and thanks to the ingenuity of pioneers, tools have been perfected to capture the sea (or under the sea) and offer ever more spectacular images to the amazed public. We are witnessing the capture of the movements of marine animals, the recording of images in the seabed, and the capture of previously unknown maritime landscapes. A cinematic genre is emerging, popularized by Commander Cousteau: the underwater documentary. Little by little, maritime cinema developed its own aesthetic language, mixing poetry, realism, celebration of nature and strangeness. Visitors will be immersed in the work of artists such as Etienne-Jules Marey, the Lumière brothers, Ernest Williamson, Jean Painlevé, Robert Flaherty and Jean Epstein.
The exhibition also addresses the sea from the point of view of fiction, an inexhaustible theme for American production houses, with pirates (men and women), mutinies and naval battles. It also explores the hostile environment in which sailors survive. Boats and submarines offer screenwriters a multitude of stories taking place behind closed doors, on the surface or in depth. These depths sometimes hide submerged worlds and fantastic creatures.
The exhibition "Objectif mer: the ocean filmed" is a dedication to the memory of Jacques Perrin.
Curator: Vincent Bouat-Ferlier, general curator of heritage, director of the Chambrun Foundation, Laurent Mannoni, scientific director of heritage, Cinémathèque française.
Date: 13 December 2023 to May 5, 2024
Location: National Maritime Museum in Paris
Desire: Nature, Immersive experience, Cinema
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