Taking place in 1895 was a film screening using the cinematograph, an early version of the modern-day cinema film projector. Most of the movies by the Lumiere brothers, commonly referred to as the “fathers of cinema,” were live-action films showing people in daily life situations, street sceneries, royal events or festivals. Being much more than mere documentary films, they left many a viewer fascinated by that ability of movies to turn familiar scenes of everyday life into little dramas. With the commercialization of the cinematograph in 1896, the Lumiere Company began to dispatch cameramen and projectionists to all parts of the world, in order to expand their photographing and screening business. Constant Girel and Gabriel Veyre, two of the company’s engineers, visited Japan in 1897-1898. Their respective stays resulted in a total of 32 movies capturing scenes of Meiji era Japan, including recordings of traditional dances of the Ainu people that bear testimony to the perception of foreign countries under colonial rule at the time.