La Ciotat, where the world’s first film was screened,
and today, home to a high-tech revolution


The coastal town of La Ciotat is today a satellite and high-tech centre, yet still retains a similar quality of life that first attracted Antoine Lumière in 1891. His two sons shared his passion for working with images, and on 21 September 1895, after several years of effort, the first film in the history of cinema was screened at L'Eden Théâtre.

"The Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat Station" is considered the world’s first-ever motion picture, and its triumphant screening in La Ciotat was the birth of cinema, as we know it today.

Still standing more than a century later, L'Eden Théâtre is the world’s oldest theatre, and it now shares the town with a thriving a high-tech centre that specialises in 3D images. Principia, for example, specialises in modelling images specific to marine and naval engineering.

The site of La Ciotat has also developed a satellite centre. Companies include Worldsat, a satellite terminal manufacturer that has recently signed a partnership agreement to supply equipment for a subsidiary of the Berlusconi Mediaset group.

Developed by the company’s research and development services, and designed for the domestic reception of the “bouquet” of Mediaset’s digital terrestrial television, the terminal offers the television audience a large range of services.

Equipped with a modem, it offers numerous interactive possibilities, including consumer panels, consultation of bank accounts and participation in TV-reality shows. This new product, especially designed around the needs of Mediaset’s terrestrial digital television (Canal 5 etc.), has a potential of 4 million units in the next 2 to 3 years.

Moreover, the town has a "cyber-space" which is to receive approval from the Région and the Caisse des Dépôts, under the name of “CYBERBASE ERIC”. La Ville de La Ciotat has obtained this name, and the new equipment will open in spring 2004, on the site of the current cyber-space. It has already received 6 000 visitors a year.

The Script-writers' Festival
La Ciotat, keeping cinema alive

For the past six years, La Ville de La Ciotat has hosted the Scriptwriters' Festival.

The festival has acquired a reputation as a meeting place for professionals and the public in the cinema industry, and also as a place of learning. A unique event, it has attracted almost a thousand professionals and a growing public in the last six years.

Participants can take advantage of the cultural and strategic value of the town that has such a strong cinematic link to the past. The Théâtre du Golfe, the Chapelle des Pénitents Bleus, the salle Saint-Jacques, the Evariste Gras square and its bar, the Lumière Cinema, and the chapel in the Jardin de l'Oeuvre are picturesque places that favour the festival’s success.

In La Ciotat, the cinema is what makes people dream - not because it requires technical knowledge, but because it depends on the imagination, creation and the fragile, human art of writing.

With the short film of a train arriving at La Ciotat station, the town will always be associated with the world’s first moving images on the big-screen. It is the ideal annual meeting place for scriptwriters and their scenarios.

For more information:
www.scenario-mag.com