Nation-Building Across Media: Lumière Films’ Intervention in the Hungarian Visual Sphere

Abstract

One of Hungary’s major mediatized political events was the procession organized on June 8, 1896, as part of the Hungarian millennial celebrations intended to express national progress, pride, and unity. Captured by professional and amateur photographs and represented in drawings, paintings, and a cyclorama, as well as actuality films recorded by the Lumière traveling operators, the political event of the procession reached a much larger audience than the actual public present. The article aims to show the differences between the staged event of the procession intended to bolster the image of a unified nation and its visual mediation — for example, by means of moving images accessible to a potentially global audience. The analysis proceeds by comparing contemporary accounts and visual representations of the event, confronting different models of spectatorship and identity in experiencing and representing the celebration.