''Bataille de neige'' (), also known as ''Snowballing'', is an 1897 French

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

produced by the Lumiére brothers. Filmed in

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

, France, it depicts a number of individuals engaged in a

snowball fight A snowball fight is a physical game in which Snowball, balls of snow are thrown with the intention of hitting somebody else. The game is similar to dodgeball in its major factors, though typically less organized. This activity is primarily playe ...

on a city street.

Plot

The camera is centered on a pathway made through a snow-covered city street. On both side of the pathway, several men and women are engaged in a

. A cyclist rides into the path of the fight, and is hit by snowballs, causing him to lose control of his

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

and fall to the ground. His cap is flung onto the pathway. One male participant in the engagement grabs hold of the cyclist's bicycle and lifts it off the ground, and the fallen cyclist scrambles to his feet and yanks his bicycle away from the participant. After retrieving possession of his bicycle, the cyclist climbs back atop it and rides away.

Production

''Bataille de neige'' was shot in

, France, with a

cinématographe Cinematograph or kinematograph is an early term for several types of motion picture film mechanisms. The name was used for movie cameras as well as film projectors, or for complete systems that also provided means to print films (such as the Cin ...

, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in a

35 mm format 135 film, more popularly referred to as 35 mm film or 35 mm, is a format of photographic film used for still photography. It is a film with a film gauge of loaded into a standardized type of magazine – also referred to as a casse ...

with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

Current status

Given its age, the copyright on this short film has now expired. It is featured in a number of film collections, including ''The Movies Begin – A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894–1913''. In 2020 the ''New York Times'' did a feature article about the film, written by Sam Anderson, after a Russian amateur film restorer posted a cleaned up and colourized version of the film to

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

. The result is "shockingly modern" said Anderson.

References

External links

* 1897 films French black-and-white films French silent short films 1897 short films Films shot in Lyon 1890s French films {{short-silent-film-stub