cinema and film - events

c. 60 BC	Rome	The Roman poet Lucretius describes how the sequential display of images can produce the illusion of motion.
1882	France	French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey invents a rifle-shaped camera that records 12 successive photographs a second. In order to study the flight of birds, he mounts images on a rotating glass plate to simulate motion, and then projects them. They are the first motion pictures taken with a single camera.
1889	UK	British inventor William Friese-Greene develops a camera that takes ten photographs per second, on a roll of perforated film moving behind a shutter. The first true motion picture camera, he uses it to film scenes at Hyde Park Corner, London, England.
1891	USA	US inventors Thomas Edison and William Dickson patent the ‘Kinetoscope’, a predecessor of the motion-picture film projector. It consists of a strip of film, viewed through a peephole in a box while being wound from one reel to another, producing the illusion of persons and objects in motion. Edison sees it as a toy and fails to consider projection of the images.
1891	USA	US electrical engineer Thomas Edison, with his assistant William Dickson, develops the Kinetoscope, the first commercial motion picture film process.
13 February 1895	France	French inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the cinématograph, a device for taking and projecting moving pictures. On 28 December 1895, in the basement of the Grande Café in Paris, France, they show the film La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière/Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, the first film shown to a paying public. It sparks an entire new industry. It is also the first documentary film, and projects at 16 frames per second. They make more than 40 films during 1896 and record everyday French life.
1896	France	Le Coucher de la Marie, directed by Eugène Pirou, is released in France. The first pornographic movie, it stars Louise Willy.
27 June 1896	UK	Footage of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Cardiff Exhibition is the first newsfilm to be shown in Britain.
4 May 1897	France	An explosion and resulting fire at a Cinématograph emonstration at the Charity Bazaar in Paris, France, kills 121 people and leads to a decrease in film attendance.
1900	France	The Lumière Brothers Cinématograph is the highlight at the Paris International Exhibition. Primitive colour and sound film systems are also demonstrated.
1906	United Kingdom	George Albert Smith of the Charles Urban Trading Co. develops Kinemacolour, the first commercially successful colour process for film: it uses two colour filters and two reels of film.
1906	United Kingdom	Eugène Lauste patents the first sound-on-film process in Britain, though it is not yet suitable for speech. His attempts at later commercial exploitation of it are thwarted by the war.
1906	USA, United Kingdom	The first animated cartoons are made in the USA and Britain.
1906		The first ever feature-length film is produced, The Story of the Kelly Gang, in Australia. It is directed by Charles Tait, and stars Elizabeth Tait and an uncredited actor as Ned Kelly.
1907	France	The French Lumière brothers develop the Autochrome system, which makes colour photography in natural colours viable.
1909	USA	US film director D W Griffith works with Canadian-born child actor Gladys Smith, and helps transform her into Mary Pickford, one of the first great movie stars, who comes to be known as ‘America's Sweetheart’. Their first film together is The Violin Maker of Cremona (1909).
March 1909	USA	The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures is founded in the USA. There is no classification system for films – they are either approved or cuts are recommended.
1910	France	The Gaumont-Palace opens in Paris, France, the first of the great ‘picture palaces’ and one of the first cinemas with facilities to give continuous showing of multi-reel films.
1911	USA	David Horsley establishes the first film studio in Hollywood, California, the Nestor Studio. Fifteen film companies are also established within the year.
1912	Italy	The first film awards for feature-length films take place at the International Exhibition in Turin, Italy.
1912	USA	The Edison film studio produces the first film with sound. It is a 15 minute musical based on nursery rhymes in which the sound is roughly synchronized on a phonograph with the image.
1912	United Kingdom, USA	London, England, has 400 cinemas, up from 90 in 1909; in the USA, 5 million people visit the cinema daily.
1913	United Kingdom	The British Board of Film Censors is established. It employs a simple system of classification, using U for universally appropriate films and A as an adults-only rating.
1915	USA	Dr Herbert Kalmus develops the Technicolor film process in the USA. It will not be commercially viable until the 1930s.
8 February 1915		The film Birth of a Nation, directed by D W Griffith, is released in the USA. An influential and commercially successful silent film, it stars Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, and Henry B Walthall. Its epic scope and innovative cinematic techniques are, however, marred by racism, which includes a sympathetic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.
1917	USA, Europe	The cinema is becoming a more popular pastime among the middle classes in the USA and in Europe with the advent of better-quality films and the need for diversion during the war.
1917	USA	Dr Herbert Kalmus makes the first successful use of the Technicolor film process, which he invented in 1915. The Gulf Between is the first technicolor film.
1921		The film Dream Street, directed by D W Griffith, is released in the USA, starring Tyrone Power, Sr, Ralph Graves, and Carol Dempster. It is the first to feature some singing and dialogue, supplied on synchronized records.
1924	USA	The film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a merger of the Metro and the Goldwyn studios, with the addition of Louis M Mayer Productions, is formed, thanks to negotiations by Marcus Loews, president of Loew's Inc, a theatre company. Louis Mayer becomes head of the studio, a position he holds for three decades.
1924	USA	US inventor and radio engineer Lee DeForest invents the the Phonofilm system, which records sound optically on film.
1927	USA	The US motion picture executive William Fox produces the Movietone News newsreel. It is the first commercially successful sound film combining narration and picture.
6 October 1927	USA	The film The Jazz Singer, directed by Alan Crosland and produced by the film company Warner Brothers, is released in the USA. It is the first feature film with spoken dialogue, and it stars Al Jolson, May McAvoy, and Warner Oland. All US film studios convert to sound within two years.
1928		The Walt Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie is released in the USA, starring Mickey Mouse, the first animated film with sound.
1928	USA	The US company Western Electric develops a sound-on-film system with greater flexibility than Vitaphone (a sound-on-disc system), which has proved expensive and difficult to transport.
1930	USA	The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America, better known under president Will Hays as the Hays Office, adopts the Motion Picture Production Code, a self-regulatory code to give guidance on content issues in films, especially sex and religion.
6 June 1933	Germany	Josef Goebbels, the German Minister of Information and Propaganda, authorizes legislation to exclude Jews and foreigners from involvement in film production. As the Nazis increase their control over the cinema industry, a number of noted Germans involved in film production, notably Fritz Lang, Erich Pommer, Leontine Sagan, and Max Ophüls, leave the country.
1934		The film David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, it stars Frank Lawton, with W C Fields as Mr Micawber.
1935		The name ‘Oscar’ is adopted for the Academy Awards.
1935		The film Les Misérables, directed by Polish film-maker Richard Boleslavsky, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, it stars Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, and Rochelle Hudson.
1936	USA	The film The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, directed by Henry Hathaway, is released in the USA. The first film to contain location shooting in colour, it stars Fred MacMurray, Sylvia Sidney, and Henry Fonda.
1936	Italy	Cinema censorship guidelines in fascist Italy discourage the portrayal of women as anything but virgins, wives, or mothers. The Pope expresses concern about the moral influence of cinema.
1936	Germany	The rejection of German films abroad, because of the unpalatably high propaganda content, leads to a crisis in the German film industry.
1936	Germany	The German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, one of the leading women directors in film history, directs Olympia (released 1938–39). It is a stylized two-part film documenting the Berlin Olympic Games, and is recognized as one of the landmarks of Nazi cinema.
1936	England, USA	The film Modern Times, directed by the English film-maker Charlie Chaplin, is released, the last of the great silent films. He also stars in it, along with Paulette Goddard.
1937	France	The French director Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion is released. A pacifist film set in a German prisoner of war camp during World War I, it will be acclaimed as a classic of world cinema. The film stars Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Erich von Stroheim.
1937	USA	Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is released in the USA. It is the first feature-length animated film.
1937	USA	The film industry in the USA attracts three-quarters of all spending on leisure and entertainment.
1937	USA	The animated character Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Warner Bros production Porky's Hare Hunt, released in the USA, although it will take a few years before his looks and character become settled.
1938	England	The film The Lady Vanishes, directed by the English film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, is released. Adapted from the novel by Daphne du Maurier, it stars Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.
1938	UK	The film Pygmalion, directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, is released in the UK. Based on the play by George Bernard Shaw, it stars Howard as Professor Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle.
1939	USA	The film Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming (with George Cukor and Sam Wood), is released in the USA, premiering in Atlanta, Georgia. Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, it stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. One of the most commercially successful films of all time, it runs for 222 minutes and wins eight Academy Awards.
1939	Germany, USA	The film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by the German film-maker William Dieterle, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, it stars Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, and Maureen O'Hara.
1939	USA	The classic Western Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, is released in the USA, starring John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, and George Bancroft. Also Ford's film Young Mr Lincoln, starring Henry Fonda is released in the USA.
1939	USA	The film musical The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming and King Vidor, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Frank L Baum, it stars Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, and Margaret Hamilton.
1939	world, USA	There are 2,012 films produced worldwide; 483 of these are produced in the USA.
1940	USA	Walt Disney releases the cartoon animation film Fantasia. The classical music score includes Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Disney also releases the animated film Pinocchio in the USA.
1940	USA, England	The film Rebecca is released in the USA. It stars Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, George Sanders, and Judith Anderson, and is the English director Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood film.
1940	USA	The film The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor, is released in the USA, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart. It is based on the play by Philip Barry.
1940	USA	The US animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera create the cartoon duo Tom (a cat) and Jerry (a mouse), who appear in their first cartoon Puss Gets the Boot.
1941	USA	The film Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, is released in the USA. He also cowrites and stars in it, with Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, and Everett Sloane. The US millionaire William Randolph Hearst threatens to sue the makers, regarding the film as personally defamatory.
1942	USA	The film Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, is released in the USA. It stars Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson, and Sydney Greenstreet.
1942	UK	Twentieth Century Fox insure the legs of film star and war pin-up girl Betty Grable with Lloyds of London for $1 million.
1945	France	The film Les Enfants du Paradis, directed by Marcel Carné, is released, starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Pierre Brasseur. Filmed in France during the German occupation, its treatment of passion and sacrifice embody the French spirit in wartime.
1945	USA	The film The Lost Weekend, directed by Billy Wilder, is released. Based on the 1944 novel of the same name by Charles Reginald Jackson, and focusing on the social problems caused by alcoholism, it stars Ray Miland, Jane Wyman, and Philip Terry.
1946	UK	The film Great Expectations, directed by David Lean, is released in the UK. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, it stars John Mills, Bernard Miles, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, Valerie Hobson, and Jean Simmons.
1946	USA	The film It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra, is released in the USA, starring James Stewart, Henry Travers, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore.
1949	USA	The film musical On the Town, directed by Gene Kelly, is released in the USA. He also stars in it, along with Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin.
1950	Italy, Japan	The intricately structured film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is released in Japan, starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, and Masayuki Mori. It wins the Grand Prix at the Venice International Film Festival the following year, helping to create a market for Japanese cinema in the West.
1 January 1951	UK	The British Board of Film Censors introduces the ‘X’ classification, to identify films unsuitable for those under 16.
1952	USA	The film musical Singin' in the Rain, directed by Gene Kelly, is released in the USA. Kelley also stars in it with Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds.
1954	UK	The film Genevieve, directed by Henry Cornelius, is released in Britain, starring Kenneth More, Dinah Sheridan, John Gregson, and Kay Kendall. It is the first British film to be shot in Technicolor.
1954	USA, England	The film Rear Window, directed by the English film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, is released in the USA, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly.
1954	Japan	The film Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is released in Japan, starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Kuninori Kodo.
19 April 1956	USA, Monaco	The US film star Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco. The screening of her films in Monaco is subsequently banned.
1957	UK	The film The Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, is released in Britain, starring Alec Guinness, William Holden, and Jack Hawkins.
1958	USA	The film musical South Pacific, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener and directed by Joshua Logan, is released in the USA. With music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, it stars Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, Ray Walston, and John Kerr.
1958	USA	The film Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles, is released in the USA. He also stars in it, along with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, and Marlene Dietrich.
1958	USA, England	The film Vertigo, directed by the English film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, is released in the USA, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.
1958	USA	The film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Richard Brooks, is released in the USA. Based on the play by Tennessee Williams, it stars Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith Anderson, Madeline Sherwood, and Larry Gates.
1959	USA	The film Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by the US author and diplomat Lew Wallace, it stars Charlton Heston.
1959	USA	The film Some Like it Hot, directed by Billy Wilder, is released in the USA, starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis.
1960	USA, England	The film Psycho, directed by the English film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, is released in the USA. Based on the book by Robert Bloch, it stars Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, and John Gavin.
1960	USA	The film Spartacus, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is released in the USA, starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis, and Jean Simmons.
1961	USA	The film Breakfast at Tiffany's, directed by Blake Edwards, is released in the USA. Based on the novella by Truman Capote, it stars Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard.
1963	USA	The film The Great Escape, directed by John Sturges, is released in the USA. The star-filled cast includes Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, and Charles Bronson.
1965	UK	The film Doctor Zhivago, directed by David Lean, is released in Britain. Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, it stars Julie Christie and Omar Sharif.
1965	USA	The film musical The Sound of Music, directed by Robert Wise, is released in the USA, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. It is a huge box-office success, becoming the most successful film of the 1960s and even outperforming Gone With the Wind.
1966	USA	The film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Mike Nichols, is released in the USA, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It is based on the play by Edward Albee.
1968	USA, UK	The film 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by US film-maker Stanley Kubrick, is released in Britain. Based on Arthur C Clarke's story The Sentinel, it stars Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea, and William Sylvester, with Douglas Rain as the voice of the computer HAL.
1969	USA	The film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, directed by George Roy Hill, is released in the USA, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
1969	UK	The development of multiplex cinemas is well underway in Britain, with the creation of the first triplex at the ABC Lothian Road in Edinburgh.
1971	USA	The controversial film A Clockwork Orange is released in the USA. Based on Anthony Burgess's novel, it is directed by Stanley Kubrick and stars Malcolm McDowell.
1971	USA	The film The French Connection is released in the USA. It is directed by William Friedkin and stars Gene Hackman and Fernando Rey. It will win several Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor.
1972	USA	The epic gangster picture The Godfather is released in the USA. It is co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton, and Robert Duvall.
1972	USA	Sears, Roebuck introduces the first video rental system in the USA, hiring out films for $3–6 a night, to run on the Avco Cartavision video player.
1973	USA	The film The Sting, directed by George Roy Hill, is released in the USA. It stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The film will win seven Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, and best music score.
1973	UK	The film Don't Look Now, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, is released in the UK. It is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier.
1973	USA	The horror film The Exorcist is released in the USA. Based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty, it is directed by William Friedkin and stars Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, and Linda Blair.
1974	USA	The film Godfather Part II is released in the USA. It is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The film will win a number of Academy Awards, including best picture, best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best musical score.
1974	France	The film Emmanuelle, directed by Just Jaeckin, is released in France, at the Triomphe cinema on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. A very successful soft-porn film, it stars Sylvia Kristel, Marika Green, and Daniel Sarky. It will run for a record-breaking 11 years.
1975	USA, Czechoslovakia	The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is released in the USA. It is directed by the Czech film-maker Miloš Forman and stars Jack Nicholson. The film will be only the second in Academy Award history, after Frank Capra's 1934 comedy It Happened One Night, to win Academy Awards in all the major categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.
1976	USA	The home video cassette recorder is introduced into the US market, with two incompatible models. The Japanese electronics company Sony markets the Betamax system, released in 1975, and fellow Japanese electronics company Japanese Matsushita Corporation (JVC) markets the Video Home System (or VHS), which eventually dominates the trade.
14 November 1976	USA	The televising of Gone With the Wind attracts the highest audience for a film ever in the USA, with more than 33 million viewers.
1978	USA	The comedy National Lampoon's Animal House, directed by John Landis, is released in the USA. It stars John Belushi and Tim Matheson and becomes a cult classic.
1979	USA	The film Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is released in the USA. Based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it stars Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, and Robert Duvall.
1979	UK, USA	The film Monty Python's Life of Brian, directed by Terry Jones, is released in the UK and the USA. It stars the Monty Python team Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. In the USA, criticism from religious quarters causes the film to be withdrawn. This leads to further unrest, as citizen groups protest that the move constitutes censorship.
December 1979	UK	Survey results show that there are 230,000 video cassette recorders in the UK, 80% of which are rented. One in five people have not heard of video.
1980	USA	The film The Empire Strikes Back, directed by Irvin Kershner, is released in the USA. The second instalment in the original Star Wars trilogy, it stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher.
1980	USA	The film Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese, is released in the USA. It stars Robert De Niro.
1980	USA	The film The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis, is released in the USA. It stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and features music personalities such as Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Ray Charles.
1981	UK	The film Chariots of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, is released in the UK. It stars Ian Charleson and Ben Cross.
1982	USA	The film ET: The Extraterrestrial, directed by Steven Spielberg, is released in the USA. It stars child actors Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore.
1 September 1985	UK	The British Board of Film Classification institutes a video classification system.
1987	USA	Income from video rental in the USA reaches twice the level of box-office receipts.
1990	USA	The Motion Picture Association of America attempts to introduce a No Children Under 17 rating as a guideline in the USA. However, cinemas refuse to show such films, so the rating is dropped for major films.
1993	USA	The film Schindler's List, directed by Steven Spielberg, is released in the USA. Based on Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning book Schindler's Ark, it stars Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes.
1994	USA, France	The film Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino, is released in the USA, starring John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, and Harvey Keitel. It is awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
November 2002		The children's film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, based on one of a series of best-selling books by British author J K Rowling, goes on general release. It is directed by Chris Columbus and stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson.