Summer is here!
That means it’s time for pools, movies, and fun!
As movie theaters slowly come back, it is a good time to look back at film history to the first film ever made.
While there has been discussion about what the first animated film was, and what the first film ultimately is, in the modern sense – if we were to get technical about what the definition of film is, we will discover that the first film created was either in 1878 or 1888, and that’s a huge ten year difference, especially when it comes to technological advances.
In the world of filmmaking there is generally a canonical pantheon of Filmmaking Godfathers. Who is the Father of Filmmaking, The Father of Cinematography, The Father of the Camera? Usually whenever people talk about The Father, or rather, Fathers, of Filmmaking, they are referring to two French Lumiere Brothers, but recent scholarship has proven that the famed Frenchmen probably weren’t the first to put movie magic in front of a viewing public; nor was it Thomas Edison, who somehow retains credit for his “work” in the film industry for “his” camera (that he stole). The Father of Filmmaking goes to a select group of people, so regardless of who manages to claim credit, via posthumously through historical efforts, it is safe to assume that The Founders of Filmmaking are anywhere from 10-40 people, a range of men and women from about 15 countries.
Regardless of personal feelings, and baring current scholarship (excluding Thomas Edison, who was known to take credit for other people’s work) these people deserve mentioning and the credit as founding one of the most enduring mediums of all time (this is not a complete list, but names worth mentioning):
Louis Le Prince (considered the Father of Cinematography)
The Lumiere Brothers
Nikola Tesla
Lotte Reiniger (completed the oldest surviving animated film, “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”)
J. Stuart Blackton
Eadweard Muybridge
Vladislav Starevich
Emile Cohl
Romeo Bosetti
Émile Reynaud
Winsor McKay
Dudley Buxton
Anson Dyer
John Bary (considered to be the Father of the Modern Studio)
As with all history, when it comes to dates, especially when records are missing and so many people were working on different projects at the same time, we can only use our best guess to date the “birthday” of film.
On June 15th, 1878, the world witnessed “The Horse in Motion”, a film captured by 12 individual cameras, with footage edited and played on a loop, featuring the world’s first film star – a horse. The work is technically a series of twelve looped “cabinet cards” – a type of photograph that was produced on a card. When edited together, and considering that it was photographed with a camera, it can, for all intents and purposes be considered film, even if a precursor to what we consider film today to be.
The work is considered to be one of the finest achievements in photography and the earliest example of editing. While it may not be the makings of a blockbuster, “The Horse in Motion” should be credited as one of the first films created, and Eadweard Muybridge placed on a humble pedestal of his own as the first director and editor.
So to the film genre as a whole, Happy Birthday*
A Trip to the Moon 