The First Film in Cinema History: The Controversy Over a Second of Magic (Lumière, Edison, or Le Prince?)

Introduction: Searching for the Zero Point of Magic

Cinema is the story of conquering movement, yet the exact moment of this art’s birth is not easily determined. Was the first film the one that was shot first? Or the one that was publicly exhibited for the first time? To understand this mesmerizing force, we must examine the three main contenders for the title of The World’s First Film

 The Lost Contender: Louis Le Prince and the Sequential Image Capture (1888)

If the criterion is the oldest recorded moving images, the title of “First Film” belongs to this French inventor

• Key Work: Roundhay Garden Scene
• Date of Production: October 14, 1888
• Significance: At less than 2 seconds long, this film is the oldest known moving image in the world, recorded by a single-lens camera
• Tragic Fate: Louis Le Prince mysteriously disappeared before he could publicly and widely present his invention, marginalizing his contribution to cinema history for decades

Commercialization: Thomas Edison and the Start of Individual Exhibition (Early 1890s)

Edison and his assistant, William Dickson, were the first to turn cinema into a commercial product

• Key Work: Fred Ott’s Sneeze
• Date of Production: January 1894
• Significance: This short film is recognized as the first copyrighted work in the United States and was shown via the Kinetoscope device
• Main Flaw: The Kinetoscope offered an individual, peephole viewing experience, not a public and collective screening. Therefore, cinema, in the sense of a theater and a screen, had not yet been born

The Official Birth: The Lumière Brothers and the Collective Moment (1895)

The moment cinema transformed from an individual invention into a social phenomenon, establishing our modern definition of cinema

• Key Work: Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
• Date of Production: 1895
• Significance: This film, along with several other short films, was publicly shown using the Cinematograph device at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895
• Final Victory: Despite the pioneering efforts of Le Prince and Edison, the date of December 28, 1895, is accepted as the official birth date of cinema due to the public, paid, and collective screening of moving images

Conclusion: The Main Criterion for Cinema’s Birth Was Its Social Nature

Although Le Prince recorded the moving image and Edison sold it, it was the Lumière Brothers who, with the invention of the Cinematograph (the image of which you saw at the beginning of the article), turned the magic of the moving image into a communal experience and officially launched the film industry

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