No, it's not Japanese people playing stringed instruments, as you might expect if you don't know French, nor are they wrestling, if you do. It's a couple of swordsmen in traditional Japanese garb slashing at each other with swords.
It's directed by Francois-Constant Girel, presumably while on the trip to Japan on which he and Inabata Katsutaro had the first exhibition of films in that country in Osaka on February 15, 1897. Like most of Lumiere's globe-trotting exhibitors, he shot some shorts wherever he went.
Girel didn't last long in the film industry. He was soon replaced by Gabriel Veyre, and returned to France. Unable to find work in the burgeoning industry, he returned to being a pharmacist. He died in 1952 at the age of 77.
It's directed by Francois-Constant Girel, presumably while on the trip to Japan on which he and Inabata Katsutaro had the first exhibition of films in that country in Osaka on February 15, 1897. Like most of Lumiere's globe-trotting exhibitors, he shot some shorts wherever he went.
Girel didn't last long in the film industry. He was soon replaced by Gabriel Veyre, and returned to France. Unable to find work in the burgeoning industry, he returned to being a pharmacist. He died in 1952 at the age of 77.
