Year 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar.
Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz (17 October 1871, Teruel, Aragon - 2 May 1929) was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions. Segundo de Chomón (1871-1929) became involved in film through his wife, who was an actress in Pathé films. In 1902 he became a concessionary for Pathé in Barcelona, distributing its product in Spanish-speaking countries, and managing a factory for the colouring of Pathé films. He began shooting actuality films of Spanish locations for the company, then 1905 moved to Paris where he became a trick film specialist. The body of work he created over five years was outstanding. Films such as Le Spectre Rouge, Kiriki – Acrobates Japonais, Le Voleur Invisible and Une Excursion Incohérente are among the most imaginative and technically accomplished of their age. De Chomón created fantastical narratives embellished with ingenious effects, gorgeous colour, innovative hand-drawn and puppet animation, tricks of the eye that surprise and delight, and startling turns of surreal imagination (see, for example, the worms that crawl out of a chocolate cake in Une Excursion Incohérente, one of a number of films where visitors or tourists are beset by nightmarish haunted buildings, a favourite de Chomón theme).
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five (or "The Mighty Handful"), who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music. He is best known for his symphonies, his two string quartets, and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.
Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a Georgian noble, Luka Gedevanishvili (Georgian: ლუკა სიმონის ძე გედევანიშვილი) and a 24-year-old Russian woman, Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova (Евдокия Константиновна Антонова). The nobleman had him registered as the son of one of his serfs, Porfiry Borodin. As a boy he received a good education, including piano lessons. He entered the Medico–Surgical Academy in 1850, which was later home to Ivan Pavlov, and pursued a career in chemistry. On graduation he spent a year as surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of advanced scientific study in western Europe.
Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984); for bringing Charles Dickens' novels to the silver screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick,, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002. Lean has four films in the top eleven of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films.
David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and young David would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.
Artur Lemba (24 September 1885, Tallinn – 21 November 1963, Tallinn) was an Estonian composer and piano teacher, and one of the most important figures in Estonian classical music. Artur and his older brother Theodor (1876-1962) were the first professional pianists in Estonia to give concerts abroad. Artur's 1905 opera Sabina was the first opera composed by an Estonian. His Symphony No. 1 in 1908 was the first symphony composed by an Estonian.
Lemba was a finalist in the prestigious Anton Rubinstein Competition and later a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.
Artur Lemba learned piano from his brother Theodor Lemba. In 1899, following in his brother's footsteps, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There he studied piano with Carl van Arck, Prof. V. Tolstov and I. Borovka. His composition teacher was Nicolai Soloviev and he studied music theory with Alexander Lyadov, Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1908, he graduated from the St. Petersburg conservatory, receiving a gold medal in piano, a silver medal in composition, and the Anton Rubinstein prize (a Schröder piano). At his graduation ceremony, Lemba performed his Piano Concerto No. 1.