Oil Gush Fire in Bibiheybat
About Oil Gush Fire in Bibiheybat
A fire burns at an oil fountain in Bibi-Heybat, then a suburb of Baku. Alexandre Michon filmed the field while it was burning. The shot runs about half a minute.
Cast & crew
More about Oil Gush Fire in Bibiheybat
Michon produced, directed, and photographed it on 35mm Lumière film. Russian Wikipedia says his Baku program on 2 August 1898 included Fire at the Oil Fountain in Bibiheybat, and that the film was shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900. English Wikipedia dates the shooting to 6 August 1898 and the release to that day.
Themes
Background
Bibi-Heybat was an oil field outside Baku in the Russian Empire. The fire was filmed as it happened.
In film history
Azerbaijan marks 2 August as National Cinema Day because Michon showed his first Baku films that day in 1898.
Look
Michon shot it himself, on 35mm Lumière stock, at the burning fountain.
Preservation
Aydin Kazimzade and Ayaz Salayev identified the film in a French archive. With the Balakhany fountain film, it was brought to Baku and is held at the Azerbaijan State Film Fund.
Notes
- The Russian title is Pozhar na Bibi-Eibate. Another title used for the same showing is Fire at the Oil Fountain in Bibiheybat.
- A few days later Michon filmed an oil fountain at Balakhany. That picture traveled with this one from Paris to Baku.
- On 18 December 2000 Heydar Aliyev made 2 August, the date of the Baku program, Azerbaijan's National Cinema Day.
- Some scenes were shown in France in 1995 in a program for the hundredth year of cinema.
Scenes
- The fountain at Bibi-Heybat burns in a single half-minute shot.