Discuss the role of film as an early modern phenomenon

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

After photography made its impact, it was only a matter of time until moving pictures arrived. The earliest public film presentations took place in Europe and the United States in the mid-1890s: in 1895, Thomas Edison was the first American to project moving images onto a screen. In France the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière perfected the process by which cellulose film ran smoothly in a commercial projector. They pioneered the first cinematic projection in an auditorium equipped with seats and piano accompaniment. These first experiments delighted audiences with moving pictures of everyday subjects.
As film evolved, Hollywood became the center of American cinema. D. W. Griffith, the leading director of his time, made major innovations in cinematic technique. He introduced the use of multiple cameras and camera angles, as well as such new techniques as close-ups, fade-outs, and flashbacks, which, when joined together in an edited sequence, greatly expanded the potential of film narrative and mirrored the developments in modern art, such as cubism. Cinematographers began to use the camera not simply as a disinterested observer, but as a medium for conveying the emotional states of the characters. By 1925 it was apparent that film was destined to become one of the major art forms of the modern era.
Film has proven itself as both a refined artistic medium as well as a vehicle for popular entertainment. Film has paralleled all major movements in art, from total abstraction, to Dada, to impressionism, to cubism, among others. The medium itself is a reflection of modern conceptions of time and space, recording a stream of individual moments that add up to a story.