Premiers

From the most basic projector, to the most sophisticated special effects, everything we associate with the cinema experience has had its premier somewhere so here as come famous and not so famous firsts.

The very first motion picture was Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge by the French man Louis Aim� Augustin Le Prince in October 1888. He also provided the first movie mystery when he disappeared without trace from the Dijon to Paris train in September 1890, and was never seen again.

Thomas Edison however opened the first film studio, Black Maria, a frame covered in black roofing paper at his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey at a cost of $637.37 on 1 February 1893. The building was designed to revolve to face the direction of the sun.

When Fred Ott, an assistant to Edison, sneezed in front of the camera he became the star of the very first motion picture registered as such Record of a Sneeze on the 7 January 1894.

Departure of the Workers of the Lumi�re Factory was the first moving picture to be publicly presented on a screen, for members of the Societ� d�Encouragement pour l�Industrie Nationale by the Lumi�re brothers on 22 March 1895. On 28 December the same year, they gave their first show before a paying audience at the Grand Caf�, 14 Boulevard des Capucine.

Australia provided the first full length feature film when Charles Tait released the Story of the Kelly Gang, shot on various loctions in Victoria at a cost of �450, on 24 December 1906 in Melbourne.

On 1 December 1906 Paris saw the first purpose built cinema, the Cin�ma Omnia Path�, on the Boulevard Monmatre.

The World, The Flesh and the Devil was the first feature made in natural colour in Britain in Kinemacolor in 1914.

Walt disney was beaten to the punch as far as the first feature length cartoon goes by the Argentinian Don Frederico Valle who releaesed El Apostol in 1917. Argentina also provided the first feature length talking cartoon Peludopolis from Quirino Cristiani in 1931

We all know that Al Jolson was the first man to speak in a feature film, but who was the first woman? That honour goes to Eugenie Besserer who played Jolson�s mother in The Jazz Singer. The total of words spoken in that seminal work are as follows.
Jolson 340 words
Besserer 13 words
Warner Oland (as Jolson�s father) 1 word �Stop�.

3-D made its appearence in the 1936 Italian production, Nozze Vagabonde by Sante Bonaldo. Hollywood didn�t embrace 3-D until 1953.

1954 saw the beginning of a trend which still continues when the NBC show Dragnet became a movie, it starred Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday.

And finally. The first video films were available from Sears Roebuck in 1972. They were for showing on the Avco Cartavision video player which retailed for only $1,600.
Titles available included Stagecoach, Hamlet, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.