Brief Film History

The world first animated picture sequence was showed through a slit device called the "zoopraxiscope", patented in 1867 in US by William Lincoln. However it was the Frenchman Louis Lumiere who is often credited as inventing the first motion picture camera in 1895 called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers were not the first to project film. In 1891, the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S. In 1901, Eastman Kodak produced the first cardboard camera at $1.00.

Thomas Edison's "Black Maria" film studio, called America's first movie studio, was opened in 1901. The first permanent movie house exclusively designed for showing motion pictures was Thomas Tally's Electric Theater, built in Los Angeles in 1902. The first realistic (or documentary) film The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, premiered in Nickelodeons, (‘odeons’, Gk for theatre, that charge a nickel) in 1905. The world’s first feature-length film at 70 minutes in length, “The Story of the Kelly Gang” premiered in Melbourne, Australia in 1906. The Debut of Thomas Cat was the first animated short genuinely made in color using color film. The first Walt Disney cartoon was Little Red Riding Hood, produced in 1922 at his own animation studio. In 1923, the Hollywood (originally HOLLYWOODLAND) sign was built for $21,000.

1930’s to 1940’s was the era which has been predominantly referred to as "The Golden Age of Hollywood" by film critics and historians, and considered the apex of film history.

1950 Hollywood began to develop ways to counteract free television’s gains by the increasing use of color, and by introducing wide-screen films (i.e., CinemaScope, Techniscope, Cinerama, VistaVision, etc.) and gimmicks (i.e., 3-D viewing with cardboard glasses, Smell-O-Vision, etc.).

1970, The IMAX wide-screen format premiered in the Fuji Pavilion at the EXPO '70 in Osaka, Japan, with the 17-minute film Tiger Child.

India itself has a Hindi film industry known as ‘Bollywood’. Its century history saw in 1899 India’s very own first short film made by Harishchandra Bhatvadekar. In the 1931 “Alam Ara”, India’s first speaking movie directed by Ardeshir Irani. This film completely transformed the Indian movie industry. This also signalled the arrival of essential ingredients of Hindi movies, songs and dance sequences. 1960s and 70s witnessed interplay of television shows and action movies as well as many art movies. This trend was replaced by musical love stories in 80s and 90s. Movies like Main Pyar Kiya, Chandni, Baazigar, Hum, Raja, Rangeela, were the flag bearers of this new unique genre of songs and dance sequences.

1970’s saw the rise of the greatest icon of martial arts cinema, Bruce Lee and his incredible action movies paving way for the martial arts film genre. Shows like “The Big Boss”, “Fists of Fury” all struck box office gold when it opened in Hong Kong in 1972. The untimely death of the martial artist in 1973 at the age of age of 33 resulted in Bruce Lee’s earlier and posthumous (Game of Death 1978) shows to become blockbusters in the US.

1972 HBO transmitted its first cable television programming (via microwave transmission) to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, PA , this marked the start of pay-TV service for cable.

1981, MTV, a music video channel on cable, was launched 24/7. Its style of fast-moving montage was influential on films such as Flashdance (1983).

1993, James Cameron's Titanic, the most expensive and successful film of all-time in Hollywood history film produced at a budget of $200m, was the first movie to gross $1 billion. The blockbuster film had fourteen nominations and won a record-tying eleven Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and Best Director. When adjusted for inflation, however, Cleopatra (1963) had the highest budget of any film, and Gone with the Wind (1939) remained the highest grossing.

The 1990s also saw emergence of the Chinese Cinema, beginning in the mid-1980s and after (i.e., Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), Chen Kaige's Farewell, My Concubine (1993), and Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite (1993)). This resurgence culminated in the martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, marking the first major American cross-over success of an Asian action film, and became the highest-grossing sub-titled film ever released in the US, at $128 million. It received a record 10 Oscar nominations.

The first YouTube video was uploaded in late April of 2005 -- entitled Me at the Zoo – and by mid-2006 over 100 million videos were viewed daily on YouTube.com. It became the most prominent and popular participatory site for uploading, viewing, and sharing self-produced video clips. YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion. Today, consumers were viewing video content from online sources, like YouTube and many internet TV channels including Clikr, Hulu.com, Amazon.com and Apple's iTunes.

Year 2009 definitely belongs to James Cameron's monumental work Avatar (2009), a futuristic, epic 3-D live-action film, with ground-breaking special effects, and an estimated budget of $300 million. It became only the fifth film in movie history to exceed $1 billion in worldwide grosses, and did so in less than 3 weeks, it became the highest-grossing film of all-time both worldwide and domestic. It promises to start a new 3D revolution.