December 28, 1895

Salon Indien du Grand Café

The first paying public Cinématographe program at Paris’s Grand Café

The celebrated brothers' screening opened without either brother in the room, and 33 people reportedly bought tickets.

28 December 1895, in a basement on the boulevard des Capucines

On 28 December 1895 the Lumière organisation opened its Cinématographe to paying members of the public in the Salon Indien, a basement room at the Grand Café, 14 boulevard des Capucines in Paris.

Antoine Lumière and the photographer Clément Maurice organised the launch. Auguste, Louis and the engineer Jules Carpentier were absent; three Lumière employees handled the projection.

Admission was one franc, and the reported first public session drew 33 paying customers.

Ten views, about fifteen minutes

The programme comprised ten short views: Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Trick Riding, Fishing for Goldfish, The Photographic Congress Arrives in Lyon, Blacksmiths, The Gardener, Baby's Meal, Place de la Concorde, Place des Cordeliers and The Sea.

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat was not among them, so the familiar story of spectators fleeing an oncoming train cannot describe this programme.

An invited presentation for journalists, theatre managers and friends preceded the public performances; Georges Méliès attended it and tried unsuccessfully to buy a machine.

First — under which definition?

The conventional description of this as the world's first commercial public projected-film show is disputed. The Latham group had charged New York audiences for projected Eidoloscope films from 20 May 1895, and the Skladanowskys presented paid Bioscop programmes in Berlin in November.

Émile Reynaud had offered paying public Théâtre Optique performances of hand-painted moving-image bands from 1892, so the answer depends on what counts as film.

The apparatus used that day, Cinématographe no. 1, survives in the Institut Lumière's museum collection.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date, venue and status as the Lumières’ first paid public performances are solid.
Its conventional description as the world’s first commercial public projected-film show is disputed. The Latham group charged New York audiences for projected Eidoloscope films beginning 20 May 1895, and the Skladanowskys presented paid Bioscop programs in Berlin in November.
Émile Reynaud had offered paying public Théâtre Optique performances of hand-painted moving-image bands from 1892; whether those count as “film” depends on the definition.
Contemporary and later accounts variously give 33 or 35 customers, sometimes conflating the invited presentation, one session and the entire first day.