Roundhay Garden Scene & Dickson Greeting

The very first film was not made by the Lumiere brothers, nor even by Thomas Edison. In fact, Louis LePrince (who lived in Leeds, of all places) made a two-second Actuality film called Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888. It simply features members of his family walking around a garden, though it's amazing in that it predates the Lumieres by seven years.

Also, Edison's earliest surviving film is not Blacksmith Scene, the first film he screened in public. It's a film called Dickson Greeting instead, from 1891. Again, nothing special actually happens in the film - it shows his assistant, William Dickson, waving a bowler hat - but the fact that it was made at all is the fascinating part.