Rêve d'opium

"Perhaps this ballet divertissement framed by a chinoiserie is the only trace left of a film en rélief production announced with so much fanfare and national (French) pride. The Parolini procedure did not result in a 3D film, but seems – if one reads the description in “Cinémiroir” of 28 July 1922 correctly – to have been a stage device based on semi-transparent screens and lightning. Stéphane Passet, the director of Rêve d’opium, worked since 1912 for Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète and went on missions all over the world; from two trips to China he brought back over seven hundred autochromes. The chinoiserie is therefore not by chance. After the war, he left Archives de la Planète for 10 years. During this period he made at least two 3D fiction films: La Belle au bois dormant (using the Parolini method) and La Damnation de Faust (using his own method). He remained in contact with Jean Brunhes, scientific director of Archives de la Planète." Mariann Lewinsky