Bocal aux poissons rouges (1897)

• 57%
• 1897
• Documentary
• Louis Lumière

No.18 in the Lumière catalogue really stands out. Most of their films were long shots of people in everyday situations, usually in a diagonal composition. So these poor fish did not have much moving space neither in their housing nor in the framing of the picture. The resulting film is all the more remarkable in its beautiful simplicity and could be regarded as a precursor to the aquarium videos that were quite popular about a 100 years later. Aquaria have been around since the Roman Empire where they kept fish in marble tanks. From around the year 50 they were able to improve the view of their fish by replacing one marble plate with glass. Fish bowls were developed much later and are nowadays not considered as suitable for most fish.