Notable Events in Film History

By vesperc

  • First Known "Film"

    First Known "Film"
    Roundhay Garden Scene - Created by Louis Le Prince, it is two seconds in length and is the first known motion picture film to have been made. It is notable because it is a major feat of its time, and started the snowball of what film would become today.
  • Period: to

    Silent Film Era

  • The Cinématographe

    The Cinématographe
    Created by Louis and Auguste Lumière, the Cinématographe was a camera that could record, develop, and project film. This was big for its time, as nothing like that had existed yet.

  • First Public Movie Screening

    First Public Movie Screening
    The Lumières held the world’s first pub­lic movie screening at the Grand Café in Paris. They showed a 50-second black and white film that featured workers leaving their factory, and this would cause a sensation, as nothing like this had been seen before. It would help later popularize the idea of seeing movies in premieres.

  • Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)

    Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
    The release of Le Voyage dans la Lune was one of the first films to achieve international distribution, though mainly through piracy. It helped to establish the fiction film as the cinema’s mainstream product and was created by Georges Méliès, who adapted it from a book. The film was 14 minutes in length or one reel.

  • First Feature Length Film Gets Released

    First Feature Length Film Gets Released
    Previously, films had not reached anywhere near the length they are today, but with the release of "The Story of the Kelly Gang", directed by Charles Tait, that was changed. The movie was an hour and ten minutes in length and began a movement towards longer films.

  • First Color Film

    First Color Film
    "Visit to the Seaside" is the first commercially produced film in natural color. It is eight minutes in length and utilizes the Kinemacolor process for its color. This is important because it was one of the first successful Kinemacolor films, showing that the era of black and white would be soon to end.

  • First Soundtrack

    First Soundtrack
    Until "The Assassination of the Duke of Guise", films had not featured music, but this movie featured a soundtrack specifically written for it, composed by Camille Saint Saens.

  • 4th Wall Gets Broken

    4th Wall Gets Broken
    The practice of "breaking the fourth wall" took place for the first time in 1918, in the film "Men Who Have Made Love to Me." While not super notable, it is still interesting to see how old things shape current culture today.

  • First Live Broadcast

    First Live Broadcast
    The BBC made the world's first television broadcast to British audiences: it is a live transmission done via the Telstar satellite. It would not be until 1951 that the United States did the same, but this would change the way news was delivered to people and the way things were filmed and operated around the studios.

  • First Film Festival

    First Film Festival
    The first film festival was held in Venice, Italy, and it began a tradition that would be an annual thing from 1935 onwards. It helped shape the culture we have today surrounding film.

  • The First Camcorder

    The First Camcorder
    Jerome Lemelson invented the very first camcorder in 1980, which opened up everyday consumers to the ability to film and record video and sound simultaneously.

  • First Movie to Gross $1 Billion

    First Movie to Gross $1 Billion
    The Titanic, released in 1997, was the first film to make one billion dollars in the first 74 days of release. This would help show how much money really is in film and help influence the future of filmmaking forever.