On December 28, 1895, the film industry got off to a rocky start at the Grand Café in Paris. Only 30 people were seated out of the 100 seats set up for the occasion, and the Lumiere brothers' famous cine projector was placed on the central step. The screening process lasted 15 minutes, and a total of 13 Lumiere short films were shown, each of which was less than one minute.

Like most new media, the Lumières struggled to imagine what the future of new technology might hold. At this time, Guglielmo Marconi was experimenting with using radio waves to transmit signals several kilometers away. He believed he had created a new technology for ship-to-shore communications.

Although almost all the invited members of the press did not attend the first post-Christmas screening, queues were already forming in the makeshift cinema before New Year's Day in 1896, and tickets remained in short supply for the next century and a half.

According to historical records, in the first two days of January 1896, more than 2,000 viewers paid 1 franc each to watch Lumière's screening. The success of the first attempt to screen event films also prompted Lumière to start promoting screening events across Paris.

Another landmark poster design for the Lumiere Brothers' screening at the Grand Café in Paris appeared at Sotheby's London in 2018, sparking considerable interest among film buffs. The bidding price exceeded Sotheby's official estimate of 40,000 to 60,000 pounds, and it was finally sold for 160,000 pounds. At the exchange rate at the time, this was equivalent to $206,850.

There are two styles of this work, one is a 41.5x29.75 inch (105.4x75.5 cm) portrait created by Henri Brispot (1846-1928), showing the crowd waiting to enter the Indian Salon; the other is a 47X62.25 inch (120x15 8 cm), a large landscape painting by Marcellin Auzolle (1862-1942), showing a cheerful audience watching the screening of one of the short films - this 49-second short later became the first comedy film, L'Arroseur Arrose ("The Sprinkler").

World's first movie poster, featuring 49 seconds of comedy, to be auctioned at Heritage Auctions

Within a few months, Lumiere Cinemas opened in major European cities and held private screenings for many heads of state, kings, queens, and even the Russian Tsar and Tsarina.

Both posters have undoubtedly appeared at auction and are found in private collections, but very few have appeared at auction since the turn of the millennium, and the one to be sold at Heritage Auctions in October 2023 is the rarest of the two.

Heritage Auctions has an official estimate of $50,000 to $100,000 for the poster, but in the past 20 years, the only two posters have sold for more than $200,000 at auction. Just before the pandemic hit, the global movie box office was barely approaching $12 billion, and this year it will surpass $9 million and will inevitably recover.

This Marcellin Auzolle poster was created to promote the Lumiere brothers' landmark film screening in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris in the early months of 1896. It is one of the few (perhaps even fewer) posters that survive and perfectly captures the beginnings of one of the most important cultural, artistic and social phenomena in history.

No matter where the movie was released, whether it was a silver screen or a smartphone, this poster marked the beginning of cinema, it was the first poster to promote a specific movie, so it will become even more important 500 years later.

Not many investment projects can guarantee such profound significance.