Before Paillard - Text 1
The Swiss brand Bolex originated with a Russian man from a family of Jewish intellectuals, Jacob Bogopolsky (Kiev, 1895–White Plains, New York, 1962), known as Jacques Boolsky during the years he resided in Switzerland (1914-1939) and then Jacques Bolsey after emigrating to the United States (1939-1962). When he arrived in Switzerland in 1914, Boolsky first studied medicine and art. More interested in photography and cinema, he then took this path by becoming not only an inventor of equipment but also an entrepreneur, lecturer and filmmaker. In addition to this interest in every aspect of cinema he was actively involved in structuring the field of amateur cinema through the positions he occupied in several national and international institutions. As president of the Swiss inventors’ union, he remained up to date on the constant evolution of technical matters: amateur cinema, colour, television; he had a passionate interest in all that. A pioneer of “cinema for everyone,” Boolsky’s patents sketched out a mobile and swift filmmaker, ready to “take pictures on the fly,” as he wrote in the description of a simple camera case in 1927 (Swiss patent no. 127,287). In the films he shot privately with devices of his own design, he gave life to that spontaneous and skilful operator, capable both of drawing a portrait of a friend or family member in the street and of shooting in the confined space of the interior of an automobile. Throughout his travels in the 1930s he did not hesitate to seize the mobile point of view of the tourist as he travelled aboard a variety of machines (ships, trains, automobiles) taking him around Switzerland or to the French Riviera.
