1890s

Thomas Edison, inventor of the cylinder phonograph, also experimented with cylindrical film recordings, using a Kinetoscope camera developed with his assistant, WKL Dickson. In 1893, after modifications, the Kinetoscope was consolidated as a hand-cranked machine displaying celluloid filmstrips to individual viewers, known as a Kinetograph; the first film shown to the public in this manner was Blacksmith Scene (1893). Thomas Armat used his Vitascope device to project Kinematograph images in 1895.

In Berlin, Germany, the brothers Max and Emil Skladowsky designed a Bioskop camera which recorded and projected two simultaneous images, each at eight frames-per-second therefore creating the illusion of sixteen frames-per-second projection. The Bioskop was demonstrated to the public in 1895, though it is another pair of brothers, who also projected moving images in that same year, that history has remembered as the pioneers of film projection.

From Film To Cinema

The brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere, from France, are generally credited (despite numerous antecedents) as the inventors of projected film. Using their Cinematographe camera/projector, moving images could be viewed on a large cinema screen rather than through a Kinetograph view-finder. The first film the Lumieres projected was La Sortie De L'Usine Lumiere A Lyon, in Paris in 1895. The Lumiere's early films were all brief documentaries detailing events from everyday life, the sole exception being their short comedy Le Jardinier: L'Arroseur Arrose, also from 1895, technically the first film with a fictional narrative. The significance was not the content of these films but rather the medium itself. Like still photography, x-rays, air travel, and high speed land travel, all popularised at the turn of the twentieth century, the cinema offered a new perspective from which to view the world.

When the Lumieres' films were screened in Japan, they were accompanied by live narration performed by 'benshi', and each sequence was projected on a continuous loop (a technique known as Tasuke). The benshi originally introduced each film by providing an explanation of its exposition, though later their performances became more sophisticated. Actors would stand behind the screen, interpreting the film as a live drama, known as Kagezerifu. History came full-circle in 2003, when Anastasia Fite developed 'movieoke', a variant of karaoke in which the public performed dialogue to accompany mute film projections. [While collective interactive experiences emphasise karaoke-style participation, interactive film-making for individual viewers has been developed for computer games such as Fahrenheit (David Cage, 2005), in which the player's actions affect the progression of the narrative.]