3. - Operative Spaces
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2026
Summary
One recurring precept of naturalist cinema is that itdocuments the lives of non-idealized, unexceptionalpeople, frequently at work or within the familystructure. In some of the earliest productions ofinternational film culture, the Lumière brothers andother pioneering filmmakers depict indexicalnon-fictional enactments, actualités, along with “cinema ofattraction” narratives of spectacular visualexperiences. These actualités are a fundamental and ongoingaesthetic presence, a symbolic-precedent DNA strandin naturalist cinema—the “building block” ofRealism—which reformulates footage exhibiting thespace and time of the naturalist moment as it entersnarrative formation. Megan Minarich links theseactualités to anearlier photographic tradition that encounters andreveals the world, and concludes:
Insofar as subjects of Lumière films exemplifythe quotidian . . . parents feeding a baby,workers exiting a factory—this direct engagementwith the subject (or engagement as direct assomething mediated can be) suggests that a degreeof realism inheres in their transition frompicture to moving picture. The camera, whichremains stationary instead of jumping betweenshots, denotes a singularity of perspective muchlike that of the objective observer. Mise-en-scèneenhances the realism of such films.
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- Beyond RealismNaturalist Film in Theory and Practice, pp. 43 - 78Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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