A tour through key Western films, since 1885 to today, to illustrate how cinema language evolved.

1. ONE OF THE FIRST SCENES RECORDED USING A MOVING IMAGE CAMERA

2. Film: Workers Leaving the Factory
(1895)
Shot in the city of Lyon by Louis Lumiere, inventor,
with his brother Auguste, of one of the first moving
image cameras (at 16 Fr per second)
Screened in Paris on December 28, 1895, together
with other very short films.
It is considered to be one of the first movies made.

3. Georges Méliès’s Voyage to the Moon (1902)
Use of multiple shots and editing

4. Voyage to the Moon
Unity of time using multiple shots

5. Georges Méliès(1861-1938)
 French illusionist and filmmaker
 Famous for his technical innovations in cinema,
including time lapse photography, animation,
dissolves and other visual special effects.
 Several of his films became mayor theatrical
successes (blockbusters) in the US but he
hardly got to see any big profits from the sales.
 He was never able to make films after 1912 and
died nearly homeless at the age of 77, with over
100 films to his credit.

6. Parallel action – Unity of space
Chaplin’s Mabel Strange Predicament (1914)

7. By 1914 film language had already
established as film narrative tools…
 Illusion of a continuum of time and space,
through editing
 Parallel action
 Time compression (ellipsis of time) and
expansion of time

8. D.W.
GRIFFITH’s
The Birth of
a Nation
(1915)

9. QUANTUM LEAP
IN CINEMA
LANGUAGE:
Breaking the
theatrical
perspective

10. The Birth of a Nation
 An epic account of the Civil War (The life of two families)
 Over two hours long, the film was originally presented in two parts
separated by an intermission; it was the first 12-reel film in America.
 The film was a commercial success, more for its innovative film
techniques than the content.
 It was highly controversial due to its portrayal of black men (some
played by white actors) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive
towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as a
heroic force.
 The NAACP pursued an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film.

11. Sergei Einsenstein and the Russian School
 The essence of the cinema is editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with
another.
 Kuleshov Effect.
 Camera position uses 360 degrees (all around the action)
 Creative geography, also known as artificial landscape.
 Principles of artistic photography: composition, perspective
 Camera movement

12. S. Einsenstein’s The Battleship Potemkim (1925)
 Commissioned by the Soviet government as a communist
propaganda film.
 It glorifies the events of the mutiny of the ship and massacre
that took place in 1905 during the Tsarist rule.
 Considered one of the most important films of all times,
because of its groundbreaking achievements in cinema
narrative.
 Its most famous section, THE ODESSA STEPS, has been
extensively analyzed and studied by film critics and editors.

14. Experiencing an event or situation through the SCREEN is a
very different thing that seeing it in real life.
SCREEN TIME and REAL TIME are very different.
The language of cinema has established its own techniques
to construct a narrative that unfolds in front of the viewer as
if genuine life events. Through these techniques filmmakers
give us the illusion of reality, yet through framing,
composition and editing, these veracious moments are far
from resembling what was really happening in front of the
camera.

15. The core principles of cinema language, as
we know it today, were established almost
a century ago and remain valid and
prevalent.
How much has the language orchestrated
by innovative filmmakers 100 years ago
really changed?
90 YEARS LATER

16. Fernando
Meirelles’
City of
God
(2002)
CREATIVE GEOGRAPHY