If cinema was born with the Lumière brothers in 1895, there were attempts that sometimes existed very earlier. Like these incredible images from a film made in 1888. The oldest still in existence, duly recorded by the Guinness Book of Records.
“On December 28, 1895, we opened a public projection room in the basement of the Grand Café. And it was only from this date that someone could say: “I have been to the cinema” . These are the words of Louis Lumière, spoken around 1940. That evening, the Lumière brothers gave the first paid public screening in the history of cinema. With the very first film screened: the release of the Lumière factories in Lyon. Cinema had just been born.
Animated thumbnails
Surprisingly, the site Letterboxd list of sometimes very earlier “films”. Lasting only a few seconds, they cannot claim to be qualified as films in the traditional sense, insofar as they are most often collages of images giving the illusion of movement.
Like this series of animated vignettes of around thirty seconds called Capybara Walking; the capybara being an enormous rodent – the largest -, renowned for its placidity. This series of images was produced in 1887 by a very famous photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, who also devoted himself to the study of the science of movement.
Photographic revolver
Or these incredible images of Transit of Venusseries of photographs of the transit of the planet Venus in front of the Sun in 1874. This series was captured in Japan by the French astronomer Jules Janssen using his photographic revolverand which is considered the first example of chronophotography.
This photographic technique consists of taking a succession of photographs, making it possible to chronologically break down the phases of a movement (human or animal) or of a physical phenomenon, too brief to be observed properly with the naked eye.
A film from the Jack the Ripper era
However, the oldest images that have reached us, and which could be described as a film, come from a sequence entitled A scene in Roundhay Garden. Recorded at 12 frames per second and lasting 2.11 seconds, it is the oldest surviving film duly recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Here are the pictures…
This sequence was filmed by Louis Aimé Augustin The Prince on October 14, 1888 using photographic film on paper. According to Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, the film was filmed at the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley in Leeds, England on October 14, 1888.
Comprising only still photographs obtained by a chronophotography process, this attempt could never be viewed in motion during Le Prince’s lifetime. In 1930, the photographs were reproduced on 35mm film, thus reconstructing the movement that The Prince had failed to see. Still fascinating to see images like these, 136 years old.