Early history

In 1927, Ukrainian-born Jacques Bogopolsky, who specialised in building cameras in Geneva, imagined a camera for the 16 mm format (Bolex Auto-Cine A,B,C), and created the Bolex S.A. with the help of Charles Haccius, a businessman from Geneva. Charles Haccius invested 250,000 Swiss francs in the company. The society did not produce any cameras. However, the Auto Ciné A and B were produced by Longines in Saint-Imier and the projector by Stoppani in Bern. As of 1929, the Longines company no longer wished to produce the cameras.

Bolex was bought by Paillard & Cie [de] for 350,000 Swiss francs and Jacques Bogopolsky was hired as consulting engineer for five years. Soon Paillard realized that the cameras and projectors were not in fact the exceptional products promised by their partners, and after two years Jacque Bogopolsky was no longer welcome in Sainte-Croix.

The traditional version of the story tended to present the situation rather simply: Bolex is the name of a brand produced by the Paillard company, a brand represented mainly by a camera that was invented by Jacques Boolsky (another of Jacques Bogopolsky's names). In fact, the alleged inventor of the Bolex did not invent anything about the camera, which as early as 1935 would become known under this name. With the patents sold by Boolsky proving unusable and the machines defective, Paillard had to start from scratch to invent a Bolex which had only kept the name of Boolsky's "invention". The Bolex as we know it is the invention of the engineers at Paillard.^[3]

In 1932, Marc Renaud, a young engineer, inspired by the products of Paillard and assisted by Professor Ernest Juillard,^[who?] began development of the Paillard H 16 camera.

In 1935, the H 16 camera was put on the market, the 9.5 mm version followed in 1936 and the Double-8mm version in 1938. The H 16 was highly successful. Paillard-Bolex introduced the L 8 for the market of pocket 8 mm film cameras. With the postwar boom in home movie making, Paillard-Bolex continued to develop its 8 mm and 16 mm ranges with the H16 increasingly adopted by professional film makers. The company also made a successful range of high-end movie projectors for all amateur film making gauges.

In 1952, during the golden era of 3D film, Bolex offered the Bolex Stereo: a 3D stereo kit for their H16 camera and model G projectors. Several technical changes were made to the H cameras in 1954, above all an entirely different claw drive together with a laterally inverted film gate and a 170 degrees opening angle shutter. In 1956, the first H16 reflex viewfinder model was brought out. In reaction to the upcoming use of heavier varifocal or zoom lenses and the bigger synchronous electric motors attached to the body Paillard gave it a big rectangular base, with three tapped bushings replacing the original single-tap “button” base in 1963 and soon afterward a protruding 1-to-1 shaft for the ESM motor. A saddle for a 400-ft. film magazine finally allowed the H 16 to be used like professional synch-sound cameras.

Following rapid expansion, Bolex employed circa 6000 people in the 1960s.^[4] In 1965, Kodak introduced the Super 8 mm format.^[5] Paillard Bolex was slow to introduce a Super 8 camera although they quickly modified the 18-5 Auto 8 mm projector for Super 8 as the 18-5 L. At about this time(1966), the Bolex 16 Pro Camera was introduced to compete with the Arriflex 16 BL camera, as a technically advanced professional camera more suited for television use than the H16. Nevertheless, the H 16 Standard camera was made until the last days of 1969. The H 16 and H 8 standard models afford the rackover critical focusing feature that had been first introduced with the Bell & Howell Standard camera in 1912. In 1971, Bolex released an even more affordable option: the Bolex 280 Macrozoom Super 8. The new model featured wide-range manual zoom and the ability to focus at close distances. It shot at 2 filming speeds, 18 and 24 fps, and was able to expose single frames. Unlike the classic mechanical Bolex Cameras, the 280 Macrozoom needed 5 1.5 volt batteries to operate.^[6]

Company restructuring

Effective January 1, 1970 Paillard sold the Bolex division to Eumig of Vienna.^[7] In 1971, Eumig rationalized the Super 8 range, and Super 8 equipment production in Switzerland was discontinued. The Bolex product brand was retained while being manufactured in Eumig or Chinon factories. The H16 cameras were still made in Switzerland.

Since 1981

In 1981, Eumig went into liquidation and Bolex was bought by René Ueter who set up Bolex International in 1982.^[7] Bolex International no longer serially manufactures its cameras, but does repair 16 mm and Super 16 cameras for customers on special order to this day.^[4]

H 16

"The Bolex H 16 camera played a central role in the work of many avant-garde filmmakers from the 1940s through to the 1970s because of its precision and lightweight, robustness and range of facilities, and the high quality of its optics, especially the zoom lenses, and its simple operation, which made possible an infinite combination of creative cinematographic choices."^[17]

"The Bolex H 16 is probably the camera which most influenced a generation of experimental and documentary/ethnographic filmmakers."^[17]

Jacques Bogopolsky and Charles Haccius

Models produced by Longines

• Auto Cine (1925)
• Auto Cine B (1926)
• Auto Cine C (not released)

Paillard Bolex

Bolex Eumig

• 660 Macro-zoom (1976)
• 680 Macro-zoom (1978)

Artists

• Andy Warhol, American artist, film director, and producer^[2][18]
• Fernand Léger, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker^[19]
• Hans Richter (artist), German painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer.^[17]
• Jean Cocteau, French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic^[20]
• Paul Sharits, visual artist, best known for his work in experimental, or avant-garde filmmaking, particularly what became known as the structural film movement^[21]
• Robert Breer, American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor^[22][23]

Filmmakers

• Andrew Noren, Andrew Noren was an American avant-garde filmmaker^[24]
• Brian de Palma, American film director and screenwriter^[18]
• Brian Yuzna, Filipino-born American producer, director, and writer^[25]
• Bruce Baillie, American experimental filmmaker^[26][27]
• David Attenborough, British television executive, presenter and natural history producer^[28]
• David Lynch, American director^[18]
• George Kuchar, American underground film director and video artist, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic^[29]
• Gregory Markopoulos, American experimental filmmaker^[30][31]
• James Broughton, American poet and poetic filmmaker^[32]
• Jean-Luc Godard, French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic^[33]
• Jonas Mekas, Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema".^[17][34][35]
• Kenneth Anger, Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor and author^[36]
• Marie Menken, American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite.^[37]
• Maya Deren, Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s.^[38][39]
• Peter Jackson, New Zealand film director, screenwriter, and film producer^[18][40]
• Quentin Tarantino, American filmmaker and actor^[41][42]
• Ridley Scott, English filmmaker^[43]
• Robert Beavers, American experimental filmmaker^[30]
• Spike Lee, American film director, producer, writer, actor, and professor^[44]
• Stan Brakhage, James Stanley Brakhage, better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.^[45][46]
• Steven Spielberg, American filmmaker. He is considered one of the founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era and one of the most popular directors and producers in film history.^[47][48]
• Terry Gilliam, American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor, comedian and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe^[49]
• Will Vinton, American animator and filmmaker^[50]
• Wim Wenders, German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema.^[41][51]

Actors

• James Dean, American actor^[52]
• Marlene Dietrich, German-American actress and singer^[4]

Intellectuals

• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the United States National Book Award.^[4]
• Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist^[4]

Explorers

• Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On May 29, 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.^[53]
• Haroun Tazieff, Polish, Belgian and French volcanologist and geologist. He was a famous cinematographer of volcanic eruptions and lava flows, and the author of several books on volcanoes.^[54]
• Jacques Piccard, Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater submarines for studying ocean currents.^[53]
• Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany and geography. Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000 km across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands.^[55]