François-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke

François-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke (1848–1922) was a Swiss cinematographer, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is credited with having been the first cinematographer of Switzerland.

Early life and education He was born on 4 January 1848 in Morges into a family of winemakers from the Lavaux and was raised in Lutry and La Villette in the Canton of Vaud. he volunteered as a nurse and driver of an ambulance to the International Committee of the Red Cross (IKRK) when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870. In 1900, he quit as he could not manage to multitask his several fields of interest. Later he settled in France and was the president of the board of the French branch of the Lever brothers until 1920.

Photography and film He financially supported the chronophotographer Georges Demenÿ who had developed a machine that was able to project short films. In 1892, Lavanchy-Clarke, his father-in-law, the German chocolate-manufacturer Ludwig Stollwerck, and Demenÿ launched the Société Française du Phonoscope with the aim to make the developments in chronophotography useful for the deaf.

Lavanchy-Clarke claimed to also have developed a mechanism against fraud for the cinematographes of the Lumière brothers and in exchange, he received a license to roll a film in Switzerland as the first non-French citizen. In 1896 he received three Cinématographes Lumière with which he filmed movies at the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva the same year. Later he toured Switzerland in an apparent soap cinematographic cooperation in which he screened the movies for free to children which produced a guarantee mark of the Sunlight soap. A publicity film of the Sunlight soap with his wife and sister-in-law as actresses was watched by 70,000 spectators in Geneva. In 1897 he filmed the procession of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in London and also the visit of King Rama V of Siam in Bern. Around 1900, he appeared to have quit publicly screening movies.

Personal life During the International Conference for the Welfare of the Blind and the Deaf-mute he made the acquaintance of his future wife Jenny Elisabeth Clarke. The two married in Paddington in 1879 and from then on, he used the double-barrelled name Lavanchy-Clarke. Their children and his wife appeared in several of the movies he produced. His son Marmaduke died after he had contracted tuberculosis while being trained at Port Sunlight. Lavanchy-Clarke died on 11 May 1922 in Cannes and was buried in the Cimetière du Grand Jas.