Cinema

The cinema

The cinema, or motion picture, is a form of art which uses moving images to tell stories or reflect a reality.

History

The cinema appeared in the 19th Century with the creation of two technological devices, the kinetograph in America and in Europe the cinematograph. These two film cameras were used, in the beginning, to record the events of daily life such as a train arriving at a station, a family meal, workers leaving a factory, etc.

Consequently, the documentary branch of the cinema was well explored and started in those days, when hundreds of persons were instructed to use cameras and sent in long travels to document exotic places with images.

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  Frame from Lumière brothers’ film «La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon»

On the other hand, fiction had also begun with these cameras. As soon as the cinema started to become more popular, artists found in it a great tool to reflect their ideas but also to tell stories.

Georges Méliès was a magician in France who found in the cinema an excellent tool to improve his tricks; with the camera he could disappear and appear in another part of the stage, cut the head of his assistant or put faces to musical notes, for example. His films became a way to explore and enhance the potential of this new invention. Nevertheless, Méliès used his new tricks inside short stories that were written by him and using what we know nowadays as “audiovisual language”. The narrative film form was then born.

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  Frame from Méliès’ film «Le Mélomane»
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  Frame from Méliès' film «Un homme de têtes»