Passage de Venus (1874)

Directed by

Pierre Janssen

Genre

documentary film, silent film

Country

France, Japan

Runtime

5 min

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 139 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a short photographic recording of the 1874 transit of Venus across the sun, captured in Japan. Scientists used a special camera to take many images of the event, but the only surviving plates today show a practice model rather than the real transit.

oldestscientificfactualstagedfragmentaryexperimentalnonfictionaustere

What happens

Passage de Vénus is a series of photographs of the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun on 9 December 1874. They were purportedly taken in Japan by the French astronomer Jules Janssen and Brazilian engineer Francisco Antônio de Almeida using Janssen's 'photographic revolver'. It is the oldest "film" listed on both IMDb and Letterboxd. A 2005 study of the surviving material concluded that all the extant plates made with the photographic revolver are practice plates shot with a model, and if any of the many plates successfully exposed during the eclipse have survived, their whereabouts are unknown. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• The Impossible Voyage (1904)
• Falling Cat (1894)
• Railway Station in Kioto (1904)
• Embarquement pour le ciel (1954)
• Paris qui ne dort pas (1954)
• The River Ozu, Japan (1906)
• Christ Walking on the Water (1899)
• Enfants jouant sur la plage (1896)