Lyrical Nitrate - 1905 - 1915 (1990) - DVD

Lyrical Nitrate is a compilation of film fragments dating from the years 1905-1915. Originally these films were distributed in the Netherlands by Jean Desmet. His distribution catalogue is now inscribed to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register and taken care of by Eye Film-museum.

In Lyrical Nitrate filmmaker Peter Delpeut shows the film images in the original rich colours in which they were exhibited in the early days of cinema. And he subtly manipulates the speed of the fragments according to the mood of the images, as if like then the projector is run by hand. Delpeut makes the modern spectator experience early cinema as an opera about love and death, scored by Bizet, Gluck and Puccini.

Lyrical Nitrate is not only an ode to the art of silent cinema but also an ode to the film material itself: at the end of the film, a flickering pattern of decaying nitrate slowly replaces the photographic image, leaving the spectator with a feeling of loss and nostalgia.