Over at the Filmmaker Magazine blog, Scott Macaulay has posted an excerpt from the Lumiere Manifesto, a project inviting video bloggers and web filmmakers to create one-minute works inspired by early-film pioneers the Lumiere Brothers. The Manifesto is quite Dogme 95-esque in its call for aesthetic and technical restraint. There are six basic rules: no audio, no editing, no effects, no zooms, all cameras must be fixed and all Lumiere films must be 60 seconds or shorter. Calling these guidelines “arguably the natural limits of the original Lumieres,” Manifesto authors Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen & Brittany Shoot elaborate:

Online video has now for years allowed the advancement of personal narratives and showcased the world through the eyes of other video producers. At best, we display an edited view of our worlds. At worst, we destroy important viewpoints through unnecessary editing. [...] We believe it is imperative that the filmmaker meets the world at eye-level and not from above. That is to say, life should be filmed as it happens on its own premise without any additional intervention. Only by opening the self to our surroundings can we be at the right place at the right time.

The quest for filmed truth is a noble goal, perhaps, but the manifesto itself is just so stiff and humorless. And is it even necessary? More thoughts after the jump.

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