Mar 2, 2014 | Share Ion Martea William K.L. Dickson - William Heise |
Following on the footsteps of Blacksmith Scene (1893), The Barbershop is William K.L. Dickson’s and William Heise’s attempt to explore staging and narrative in film. “The latest wonder – shave and hair cut for a nickel” reads the poster above the barber’s counter. For us, the wonder is that of cinema.
Feb 28, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Émile Reynaud
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| 1892
During a quiet night, Harlequin jumps the fence to enter Columbine’s garden. This first sequence of rudimentary images is the earliest proof of an animated moving picture. The director was the celebrated French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud, the man that gave the world the first animated public projection, the same man that was to die in utter obscurity over a quarter of a decade after that.
Feb 22, 2014 | Share Ion Martea William K.L. Dickson |
What a genuine sense of fun lurks in this picture! Three blacksmiths go about their business, hammering intensely on a metal rod. The job says that the metal should be cooled from time to time, and the blacksmiths believe that the human body needs its own refreshment.
Feb 19, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Production Company - Distribution Company
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| 1894-1911
Edison’s flavour for technology could hardly miss the temptation to embark on the development of moving images. The early patent war with the European inventors has hardly put the avaricious businessman in a good light in contemporary criticism. But, with the opening of the Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey, Edison has truly created a new type of organisation.
Feb 18, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Director - Cinematographer | 
| 1847-1914
Wordsworth Donisthorpe started with a wool-combing machine and ended up by making his own moving picture camera. In retrospect, it is easy to see the resemblance in the mechanism between the two machines, but it is surprising that the inventor was a graduate from Cambridge University who qualified as a barrister, that dedicated his life to political activism.
Feb 15, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Émile Reynaud |
The history of motion pictures is not all about moving photographs. Before Muybridge and Le Prince, there were numerous experiments in reproducing movement that primarily involved painted images. Given the popularity of magic lantern shows and the plethora of early inventions, it is not surprising that in 1892 it was an animation projection that became the first cinematic public experience.
Feb 10, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince
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| 1888
In the history of early film, the cinematic output of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince is of a seminal value. His Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) is the first film shot with a single-lens camera, but many historians and film critics still consider the twenty frames of Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge as the most important of his works.
Feb 7, 2014 | Share Ion Martea William Carr Crofts - Wordsworth Donisthorpe |
The ten remaining frames of London's Trafalgar Square are still the oldest moving footage of the capital of the United Kingdom, but also the first footage in the world featuring a capital city. This is also the only remaining film shot with the kinesigraph by Wordsworth Donisthorpe and William Carr Crofts.
Feb 5, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Director - Cinematographer | | 1846-1894
The history of early film is full with forgotten faces and lost talents. Individuals seem to be vanishing behind other names and other inventions. In time, recorded history makes it almost impossible not to exclude certain pioneers from the cinematic canon. William Carr Crofts appears by now as a mere footnote in the history of the medium.
Feb 1, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Cinematographer - Director - Producer - Actor | 
| 1847-1910
The German-born American filmmaker William Heise can easily be considered the first professional director of photography. He shot nearly 150 short films in the last decade of the 19th century, yet it is surprising how little biographical evidence is currently available in relation to him.
Jan 29, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Director - Producer - Cinematographer - Actor | | 1860-1935
Born in France of Anglo-Scottish descent, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson can easily be considered the most important individual in the history of motion pictures. His pivotal role in the development of the craft can be exemplified by just a few achievements: he made the first camera to record moving images that went into industrial production.
Jan 27, 2014 | Share Ion Martea William K.L. Dickson | | 1891
There are multiple debates concerning the origins of film. Photographers in the nineteenth century were anxious to find a way to capture movement, almost from the moment they discovered the art of photography. It took less than half a century, and by the 1870s Edward Muybridge has already made significant advances, managing with the use of the zoopraxiscope to exhibit successfully a series of moving images.
Jan 24, 2014 | Share Ion Martea William K.L. Dickson |
Dickson’s film is neither the first, nor the most celebrated work of the experimental period. In a dark room, a man greets us and bows to the camera. This simple gesture, made over 120 years ago, survives the passing of time, almost undated. It is a symbolic invitation into the world of motion pictures.
Jan 21, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince |
Accordion Player was the last of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince’s film experiments. It is one of his less referenced works, yet the film’s importance is not found in its greatness, but rather in its novelty. This was the first ‘successful’ attempt to shoot a single character in motion.
Jan 19, 2014 | Share Ion Martea Actor | 
| 1872-1943
A silent shadow flicking to a beam of light – this is perhaps the best way to describe the person that was Giuseppe Sacco Albanese, the man that could be the first actor in American cinema. William K.L. Dickson’s and William Heise’s first successful experiment in shooting a moving image, Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890), shows a ghostly figure moving in the dark.
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