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4/3/1905: The Parishioners of Narbonne Sue the Dulaars

In 1905, the Dulaar family, who ran a modest fairground operation called the Aerogyne Theatre, found themselves at the centre of a legal action that made headlines across the country. Early one Sunday morning they had positioned their camera outside the Church of Saint Just in Narbonne, a small village in Southern France, beneath a large banner which read, ‘Cinematograph of the Aerogyne Theatre.’ As the village’s churchgoers emerged from the church, Jerome Dulaar instructed his cameraman, who was perched atop a stepladder, to capture their images on film with the intention of allowing them to see themselves on the big screen at their fairground exhibition. However, some local devotees claimed that by doing so Dulaar had violated ownership of their own image.

It’s possible that the plaintiffs in the legal case had been influenced by the recent legal case in which Dr. Eugene-Louis Doyen had successfully sued cameraman Francois Parnaland for exhibiting films he had shot of Doyen’s surgical operation for commercial profit. However, if the offended locals had hoped to gain financially from the case, he or she was to be sorely disappointed: the judge ruled that filming had taken place in a public place and those filmed had been informed beforehand.

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