Brief History of Cinema

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- 130 - 

Ptolemy of Alexandria discovers the phenomenon of persistence of vision
​

- 1250 -

Leon Battista Alberti invents forerunner of the camera obscura
​

- Aug. 24, 1456 - 

Heinrich Cremer finishes binding the first Gutenberg bibles, first books to be printed with movable type
​

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- 1800s -

Development of widespread literacy in England and elsewhere in Europe, and development as a consequence of mass media culture of books, magazines, and newspapers

- 1810 -

König’s steam-powered printing press 
​

- 1824 -

Persistence of Vision

Peter Mark Roget describes the characteristic of the human brain to keep pictures, which the eye saw, "in view" for approximately 1/20th to 1/5th of a second after they have been removed from the field of vision. 
​

- March 16, 1827 - 

The first African-American newspaper, Freeman’s Journal, appears

- 1834 -​

Zoetrope is invented by George Horner
​

- 1879 - 

Series Photography

Invented by Eadweard Maybridge with his mechanism called "Zoopraxiscope" - he recorded live action continuously for the first time, with series of 12 cameras.
​

- 1882 -

Etienne-Jules Marey recorded the first series photography of live action in a single camera with his Chronophotographic gun.
​

- 1884 -

New York manufacturer George Eastman invents film on a roll, rather than on individual slides.

- 1887 -

Hannibal Goodwin first used celluloid roll film as a base for light-sensitive emulsions.
​

- 1889 -

George Eastman began mass-production of celluloid roll film.
​

- 1891 - 

Kinetograph

Invented by William Kenedy, Laurie Dickson is the first true
motion-picture camera.
The pictures made by it were meant to emphasize the sound from the phonograph.
​

- 1893 - 

"BLACK MARIA" 

Laurie Dickson builds up the first motion-picture studio:
- Size -  25 feet by 30 feet. 
- Cost - $600
- Part of the roof opened to admit the only active light source - the sunlight. 
- The building rotated on circular track to follow the sun's course.
​

​- April 14, 1894 -

In a converted shoe store on 1155 Broadway in NY, Andrew Holland opens the first Kinetoscope parlor. 
He is the first man to make a living from the movies, because he charged 25 cents to view them.
​

- 1895 -

Cinematographe

Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented camera, projector and film printer all in one.
Establishes the standard for silent film at 16 fps
​

​- March 22, 1895 -

"Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory"

The Lumiere brothers projected their first film to french audiences.
​

Latham loop

To avert breaking of the film and to be able to use longer films, Gray and Otway Lathanm place a small loop above and below the projection lens, preserving it with extra set of sprocket holes. 
​

- Dec. 28, 1895 -

The birth of cinema - Lumière brothers showed a short programme of their documentary films (and the fictional one L’Arrosseur arrossé), to a paying audience in a room on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. These included a now famous single shot film called The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station.

- 1896 -

Vitascope

Edison buys a machine with Latham loop, powered by electricity, from Thomas Armat.
​

- April 23, 1896 - 

"Butterfly Dance"

The first color tinted film.
​

- June, 1896 -

Censorship begins with the Russian authorities confiscating the film showing the tragic coronation of Tsar Nicholas II on March 18, 1896 from Francis Doublier.
​

- 1896 -

"The Cabbage Fairy"

Alice Guy-Blache directed perhaps the first ever scripted film.
​

- 1897 -

"The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight"

Enoch J. Rector extended film into another area: commerce.
The hoarding on the front of the Tally’s reads
“See The Great Corbett Fight.”
​One of the first widescreen films.
​

- 1898 -

​George Albert Smith was among the first to film action and then project it in reverse.

George Albert Smith shot what has since been called a “phantom ride” - putting the camera on the front of a moving train.

- 1899 -

In England, R.W. Paul built the first camera dolly.

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​Georges Melies

Is the First cinema artist with his manipulation of real time and real space.
​He establishes  FADE-IN, FADE-OUT, OVERLAPPING, STOP-MOTION PHOTOGRAPHY.
​

Alice Guy

Is the cinema's FIRST FEMALE DIRECTOR working for Gaumont in France.
​

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- 1900 - 

"Grandma's reading glass"


​
"Smith’s let me dream again"






Paris Exhibition

George Albert Smith inserts the first CLOSE-UPS - motivated by onscreen characters looking through keyholes or spectacles.
​
The first “focus pull” – a shot where a photographer twists the barrel of the lens to make the image go from sharp to soft focus. In it, Smith pulled a shot of a man kissing a beautiful woman out of focus, cut to another soft image, then pulled it into focus to reveal the same man kissing his less attractive wife.
​
​On a massive 82x49-foot screen, the Lumière brothers showed colour films, and widescreen films shot on 75mm film.
There were also sound films with recorded dialogue and a “Cinéorama” in which the audience sat on top of a circular projection box and watched film presented on a 330-foot 360° screen, comprising ten adjacent images. Its descendants are the IMAX screens. 
​

- 1901 -

Edwin S. Porter uses TIME-LAPSE  when shooting Pan-American exposition by night - exposing a frame every 10 seconds 
​

- 1901 -

"Fire!"


"The Little Doctor"

James Williamson intercuts between interior and exterior shots of a building.

G.A. Smith uses the first close-up not involving characters looking through things, whose sole function was to show the audience an element of the story in more detail.
In this we first see a room, two children and a cat, the master shot. Smith cuts to a close-up of the kitten as it is given a spoonful of medicine.
​

- 1903 -

"Life of an American fireman"




​

"Great train robbery"

Edwin S. Porter combines STOCK FOOTAGE from Edison archive with stages scenes
He CROSSCUTS seven exterior shots with six interior shots and thus constructs the deception of simultaneous and PARALLEL ACTION, which is the essential skeletal element of narrative film.

Is the first Western film. 
Edwin S. Porter shows the essential entity of meaning in film is the SHOT, not the SCENE, because he doesn't show the scenes to the end. 
For the first time he uses PANNING SHOTS,
he STAGES THE SHOTS IN DEPTH,
he has an actor moving DIAGONALLY ACROSS THE FRAME,  and he uses yellow-hand-colored smoke coming from a gun shot -  SPECIAL EFFECTS.
​

- 1905 -

The first permanent movie theater - Nickelodeon (nickel theater) opens in Pittsburg.
​

- 1906 -

"The True Story of the Kelly Gang"

Australian John Tait makes the first feature-length film.

- 1908 - 

Societe Film d'Art




​

"L'Assassinat du duc de Guise"

​
Omnia-Pathe
​
"The Last Days of Pompeii"
​
"The Greaser's Gauntlet"

​
"After many years"

​
"The Assassination of the Duc de Guise"





​
"A Yiddisher Boy"

Freres Lafitte establishes the FIRST HIGHBROW MOTION PICTURE MOVEMENT in Paris, with the desire to generate cinema interest within the middle classes.

For the first time cinema was intellectually honorable and culturally appropriate.

For this film Camille Saint-Saens composed the first original 
​film music.


The First luxury cinema open doors in Paris.

Luigi Maggi in Italy directs the FIRST BLOCKBUSTER.

​
D.W. Griffith conceives camera SETUPS by changing the location of the camera in the middle of the scene.

​D.W. Griffith, again, shows what a character is seeing, thus creates the first POV SHOTS.

​André Calmettes and Charles le Bargy directed and placed the camera is at waist height, at a time when shoulder height was the accepted norm.
Some of the actors have turned their backs to the camera - This was new. Most films until this date had been frontal, their action facing outwards. The implications of this “inwardness” were extensive.​

​A man in a street fight remembers an event from twenty-five years earlier - the first flashback.
​

- 1909 -

"The Jolly Germs"

​
"The Lonely Villa"


​
" Pippa Passes"

Emile Cohl becomes the father of ANIMATION, pioneering frame-by-frame line drawing, combined with puppets and ordinary objects.
​
D.W. Griffith first uses ACCELERATED MONTAGE - progressively increases the pace of the editing between few stories for the dramatic turning point of the movie.

​Directed by D.W. Griffith is the first movie to be reviewed by 
New York Times. 
​

- 1910 -

Carl Laemmle announces that Florence Lawrence and her leading man King Baggott will attend the St. Louis premiere of their first movie together "The Broken Bath" and thus creates the 
​STAR SYSTEM. 

To increase the appeal of the films, the Star System engages in the marketing and the management of the notoriety of the stars. The same system was used before in the theater industry with the same goals.
​

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- 1911 -

"​The Loafer"

The first “eye-line matching," and the very early use of rough reverse angle editing.
​

- 1912 - 

​Phi Phenomenon


"Night of Vengeance"
(1915)

Max Wertheimer, observes the optical illusion that causes us to see a series of still images as moving.

The most innovative use of film light was in the work of the Dane, Benjamin Christensen.
Low-angle daylight contoured his imagery and sometimes the level of artificial light within a shot would be varied, to simulate a door closing or a lamp being switched on.
​

- 1913 - 

"Fantomas"

​
"The Evil Plan"



"Cabiria"


​
"The Railroad Porter"


"His Last Fight,"

Louis Feuillad becomes the begetter of the mise-en-scene, because he creatively uses space and movement within the shot.

​Mario Cesarini uses the first-known symbol in a film.
The opening shot features a slithering snake, a malign symbol from the Book of Genesis, or earlier.

​The gigantic sets used here established a bench-mark for epic filmmaking in the years to come.
Director: Giovanni Pastrone.

It had an all-black cast and a black director, Bill Foster. 
New racial ground was broken in US film.
​
​Ralph Ince shows an actress on a boat watching something, in the second shot, the fighting crewmen whom she is watching are shown. Matched reverses between the looker and what is looked at make up 30% of the film’s shots.

- 1907-1913 -

Many production companies move from the East coast to a rather small industrial town on the West coast called Hollywood, because of landscape diversity, better and warmer weather and access to theater actors/actresses.
​

- 1914 -

"The Squaw Man" 

The first feature-length Western made in Hollywood directed by Cecil B. DeMille
​

- 1916 -

​"Intolerance"

D.W. Griffith showed that a cut between shots could be a thematic tool, asking the audience to notice, not something about the action or story, but about the meaning of the sequence.
​

- 1917 -

"El Apostol"

The first animated feature, which no longer survives. Directed by Frederico Valle (Argentina), used over 58,000 individual drawings and took twelve months to make.
​

- 1917 -

The first successful movie color system TECHNICOLOR is introduced.

- 1918 -

Thomas Ince pioneered the STUDIO SYSTEM of production when he builds his studio "Inceville" - the first modern Hollywood studio.

He also introduces the CONTINUITY SCRIPT of production.
​

Mack Sennett

Is the creator of the most crucial American movie approach of the silent era -
​the SLAPSTICK COMEDY.
​

- 1919 -

 The first film school is formed in Russia - Moscow Film School.
​

Lev Kuleshov effect

Every shot has 2 meanings:
- The meaning which is acquired by itself as a single unit
- The meaning which is acquired by when juxtaposed with other shots.
​
​Lev Kuleshov is the first film theorist.
​

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- 1920s -

Robert Flaherty creates "NARRATIVE DOCUMENTARY" genre of film production.
 

- 1922 -

"The Toll of the Sea"  

"The Power of Love"

Directed by Chester Franklin is the first movie to use Technicolor.
​
Harry K. Fairall produces the first 3-D film.

- 1924 -

"The Last Laugh"


"Cinema-eye"
​

F.W.Murnau  for the first time moves the camera BACKWARD and FORWARD, as well as UP and DOWN and from SIDE TO SIDE.
​
Dziga Vertov first uses MICRO-PHOTOGRAPHY.
​

- 1925 -

"The Joyless Street"

G.W.Pabst first cuts between shots on character movement, called CONTINUITY EDITING.
​

​Schuffan process

Glass plate with magnifying mirrored surface is placed at a 45-degree angle to the camera and miniatures are reflected onto it.

This glass plate is separated from the field where live action occurs. In that empty space movie sets are made and lit to match the lighting of the miniature.
​

- 1926 -

The first studio to try sound was Warner Bros. and they are the first to build sound studio.
​

- 1927 -

"Metropolis"

"The Jazz Singer"



"Wings"

Fritz Lang uses the Schuffan process for first time 
​
Alan Crosland directs the movie for Warner Bros.
With its several singing scenes, this movie first uses sync dialogue in realistic way.

Directed by William Wellman is the first movie to win Academy award for Best Picture.
 

- 1928 -

John Logie Baird in London demonstrates Television

​Crossley Radio Survey ratings begin. First published 1930 

The transition to sound leads to increased influence of banking interests in film production

Conversion to sound results in double increase in box-office admission in two years (1927: 60 million admissions; 1929: 110 million)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is formed
​

- 1928 -

"Lights of New York"

​
"The Seashell and the Clergyman"

Directed by Bryan Foy for Warner Bros. is the first all
​taking movie. 

Germaine Dulac directs the first SURREALISTIC feature.

​

- 1929 -

"Hallelujah"


"Applause"

​


​
"Skeleton Dance"

Directed by King Vidor is the first film to use POSTSYNCHRONIZATION.

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian is the first film to use TWO SEPARATE MICROPHONES to record overlapping dialogue.
A single scene in Applause proved simultaneous sound possible in cinema. The idea of background noise, sonic landscape, threatening or warning sounds, were born in this advance.​

Produced by Walt Disney this film introduces the  
​"ANIMATED MUSICAL."

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- 1930 -

"Murder"

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock this film have the first improvised dialogue.
​

- 1931 -


​- 1932 -

​"City Streets"


"Love Me Tonight"



"Whither Germany"

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, he for the first time uses 
​SOUND FLASHBACK.
​
Rouben Mamoulian had the musical score recorded before the shoot started. This then allowed Mamoulian to choreograph actor's movements in time to the music.

​Actors look straight at the audience - after a character’s death an actress turns to the camera and says “One fewer unemployed.”
​

​​- 1932 - 

The first film festival begins - Venice Film Festival.

​Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences standardizes the Academy aperture
​( ASPECT RATIO ) to 4:3 (1.33:1). 
​

​​- 1933 -

"The Private Life of Henry VII"

​
"Gold Diggers of 1933"

Directed by Alexander Korda it starts the rage of the Historical Biography film.
​
Busbey Berkeley’s places the camera directly overhead  the action and to such abstract effect.
​It had rarely been done before.
​

- 1934 -


​- 1935 -


​- 1937 -






​- 1938 -

"La Cucaracha"

​
"Becky Sharp"

​
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" ​





"Bringing up Baby"

A short live-action movie, which first uses three- color Technicolor process.
​
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian is the first THREE-COLOR feature film.

Walt Disney produces the first FEATURE-LENGHT ANIMATED film in USA.
​
​
The first lightweight 35mm camera with reflex shutter is introduced - Arriflex.

Throughout the film director Howard Hawks has Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn overlapped each other’s dialogue. This had not been done so emphatically before and it added to the realism of film acting in comedy and drama thereafter.
​

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- Jan. 12, 1940 -

First American television network broadcast on WNBT-TV, New York, and WRGB-TV, Schenectady.
​

- 1941 -

"Citizen Kane"

Orson Welles inovations are:
- first time use of realistic group dialogue
- first use of the Lighting Mix - shots linked together by the unified sound track, not by the narrative
- He is the father of the Sequence shot
- The film is the first contemporary sound film
- Introduces the aesthetic of the composition in depth
​

​- 1944 -

Technicolor Monopack system first used for features.
​

​- 1945 -

"Roma, Open City"


"The House on 92nd Street"

Directed by Roberto Rossellini, this is the first neorealist film to be shown outside Italy.

De Rochemont applies semidocumentary style to fiction.

​- 1946 -

​​- 1947 -

Cannes Film Festival founded.

Robert Lewis, Cheryl Crawford, and Elia Kazan open the Actors Studio. The studio is home of the “method acting,” a technique based on the concepts of Constantin Stanislavski​.
​

- 1948 -

"Macbeth"


"Hamlet"

Directed by Orson Welles, the film has the first LONG TAKE of continuous dramatic action attempted on celluloid - 10 minute. 
 
Directed by Laurence Olivier, is the first British production to receive and Oscar for Best Film.
​

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- 1951 -

Lucille Ball’s "I Love Lucy" sets the model for television situation comedy;
​its success indicates film can work in television.

​Andre Bazin and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze establish Cahiers du cinema. 
Other film critics like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer  congregate around them.
​

- 1952 -
​
- 1953 -

"Bwana Devil​"

"The House of Wax" 


"The Robe"

Directed by Arch Oboler  is the first 3–D movie.
​
Directed by Andre De Toth is the second 3-D feature produced and to a considered financial success.
​
Directed by Henry Koster, 20th Century-Fox produced America’s first 1950s widescreen film, using CinemaScope.
​

- Jan. 1954 -

Francois Truffaut publishes his essay "A Certain tendency in French Cinema" in Cahiers du Cinema, with which he establishes the "AUTEUR THEORY." 
​
​NBC broadcasts Festival of Roses parade in color: first network colorcast.

- 1955 -

"La Pointe-Courte"

Directed by Agnes Varda is the first feature French New Wave film.
​ ​

​​- 1957 - 

First demonstration of laser device, by Hughes Aircraft Co.
​

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- 1961 -

"Ersatz"

Directed by Vatroslav Mimica and Dusan Vukotic is the first Foreign animated film to win an Oscar.

- 1963 -

Super-8 mm film format introduced for amateur market.
​

- 1964 -

"Fistful of dollars"

Directed by Sergio Leone, this movie starts the
​"SPAGHETTI WESTERNS."
​
Sergio Leone for the first time graphically depicts contact and exit wounds made by bullets.
​

- 1967 -




​- 1968 -



​

​- 1969 -

"Bonnie and Clyde"




"2001: Space Odyssey"

​
"Rosemary’s Baby"

​
"The Learning Tree"

Directed by Arthur Penn, this film started the New
American cinema. 

American Film Institute is founded​.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the film perfected the FRONT PROJECTION technique. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth.

Directed by Roman Polanski, he for the first time using video to see the shots exactly.

Gordon Parks was the first black director to direct a studio film.

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- 1970 -

"M*A*S*H"

Directed by Robert Altman - It was the first mainstream American film to ridicule religion and reputedly the first to use the word “fuck.”
​

- 1970 -

Video movement begins with half-inch portable videotape system hitting the market - Portapak. Made by Sony.

- 1971 -

Intel introduces the 4004, first microprocessor chip.
Computer memory chips can hold 1 kilobit of information.

- 1975 -

The Altair 8800 is the first personal computer offered to the public for sale in the U.S.
​
Dolby film sound system introduced.
​
HBO begins satellite distribution of its programming for cable system operators to offer at a premium price, establishing the first national cable network.
​
Steadicam is used for the first time, by Haskell Wexler on "Bound for Glory."
​

- 1976 -

"Futureworld"

Directed by Richard T. Heffron, the film is the debut of 3-D computer animation-wireframe hand for display on a monitor.
​

- 1978 -

The popular newspaper film critics in Chicago, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, appear on the first PBS film review show, establishing the critical trend for the 1980s.

- 1981 -

Paramount’s syndicated Entertainment Tonight becomes first national entertainment
​news show.

The featuring of “Reese’s Pieces” in Steven Spielberg’s "E.T." starts the beginning of the 
​product placement business.

- 1982 -




​
​- 1983 -

"Star Tek II: The Wrath of Khan"




​
"Sugar Cane alley"

Directed by Nicholas Meyer, here we have the first extensive sequence of photorealistic computer animation - dead planet is transformed by missile blast into vibrant place in 60 sec. The first DIGITAL MATTE PAINTING.
​
Euzhan Palcy is the first black woman to direct a film for a Hollywood studio.
​

- 1984 -

"The Last Starfighter"

Directed by Nick Castle, is the first feature to simulate ALL of its special effects - 27 minutes of deep-space sequences - 230 separate scenes.
​

- 1984 -

Michael Jackson’s Thriller (directed by John Landis) is the first music video to list
​filmmakers’ credits.
​
Garrett Brown’s Skycam technology is used for the first time at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Criterion releases "Citizen Kane" and "King Kong" on Laserdisc.
This marks the possibilities of the new medium for cinephiles.

DVI technology demonstrated at the second Microsoft CD-ROM conference.
​Although never successful in the market, it is the precursor of digital video.
​

- 1985 -

"Young Sherlock Holmes"




"Back to the Feature"

Directed by Barry Levinson, in this movie the stained glass knight is the first COMPUTER-GENERATED CHARACTER using LASER SCANNING - Dennis Muren used laser recorder to scan the knight directly onto the film stock.
​
Directed by Robert Zemeckis this movie pioneered the use of digital WIRE REMOVAL for its flying sequences.
​

- 1988 -

Sony introduces the Mavica, first digital still camera, but few consumers are ready to switch from film, and it fails quickly. Success comes eight years later.
​

- 1989 -

"The Abyss"

Directed by James Cameron, introduced the DIGITAL SET-Dennis Muren in ILM creates digital environment within which he controls lighting, camera position, movement, and the movement of objects on the set.

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- 1990 -

"The Hunt for Red October"

Directed by John McTiernan, this movie first used PARTICLE animation software.
​

- 1991 -

"Photocopy Cha Cha"

​
"Terminator 2: Judgement Day"

Directed by Chel White, is the first animated movie created on a copy machine.

​Directed by James Cameron, in this movie Dennis Muren takes morphing to the next level with T-1000, the first computer-generated character realistically modeled on the 3-D human form. 
​

- 1994 -

"Toy Story"

Directed by John Lasseter is the first fully computer-animated feature.
​

- 1995 -

Hollywood majors commit to single standard format known as DVD.
​It launches in Europe in USA the next year.
​

- 1995 -

"Casper"

Directed by Brad Silberling, this movie has the first completely computer generated character. 

- 1995 -

Dogme 95

Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring made the Dogme95 manifesto together with a set of rules called "The Vow of Chastity" which were designed to liberate the cinema from its bondage to illusionist dramaturgy and bourgeois romanticism.

- 1996 -

"The English Patient"

Directed by Anthony Minghella and edited by Walter Murch, who won an Oscar for Editing, the film is the first Oscar film to be cut entirely on digital equipment​.
​

- 1999 -

“Cambrure”

Directed by Eric Rohmer this movie is the first digital showing at the Cannes Film Festival

- 2003 - 

"Cold Mountain"

Directed by Anthony Minghella and edited by Walter Murch, the film is entirely edited on a standard Power Mac G4 computer using Apple's Final Cut Pro software.
​

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