The cinema is certainly not eternal, but it allows sacred rediscoveries. This is how 125-year-old reels found in the French Film Archives in Bois-d’Arcy, combined with the stubbornness of a handful of researchers, made it possible to pull from the dustbin of history the unusual journey of a pioneer, the Vaudois Francois-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke. Among its many activities: the Red Cross, photography, the cause of the blind, soap, , vending machines, and so on. Among his attested acquaintances, the industrialist William Lever, the composer Charles Gounod, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the painter Ferdinand Hodler. But it is thanks to his animated images, which hardly occupied him for more than five years, that he will go down in history.
