Celebrating National Short Film Day and the Birth of Movies
It’s National Short Film Day!
Hard to believe that one singular 10 minute long event over 120 years ago spawned one of the most popular forms of media entertainment. In fact, we’re betting you’ve been enjoying plenty of movies at home during the 2020 pandemic thanks to their pioneering feat of technology!
Learn more about the History of Movies on today’s blog, and check out our selection of Short Films below:
National Short Film Day was created to honour and celebrate the birth of “film” as an art form. On this day in 1895, The Lumiere Brothers revealed their collection of short films projected in front of a public audience for the very first time. Auguste and Louis gathered 33 paying customers at the Grand Cafe in Paris, France, and presented a series of 10 short films. Each film was only about 50 seconds long, but utterly captivated their audience! Until that fateful December day, there had never been anything like it.
The Lumiere brothers were pioneers of photographic and early motion-picture cinematic equipment. In fact, their first projector was called the “Cinematographe” (based off of the Kinetoscope concept) and is where we derived the word “cinema!” The first ever motion picture captured by the brothers was titled “Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory” and is the earliest known video recording. The brothers captured this short movie using their Lumiere apparatus: a single camera used for photography and projecting moving images at just 16 frames per second. They used this device to capture daily life in France, creating more than 40 films in 1896 alone! They also pioneered the first newsreel and documentaries, thus popularizing a very modern way of delivering information. They even sent a crew of cameraman across the globe to capture additional footage as well as show their work to new audiences.
The “Film Movement+” Organization has created a special day to celebrate this day and short films as an art form starting in 2019. Check out this year’s picks which are available for free streaming at filmmovementplus.com!
If you’re craving more Short Film content, we recommend browsing streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Each of these services is host to a litany of short films in multiple genres! In addition, you can also find incredible content for free on sites like YouTube or Vimeo which lend themselves naturally to short films. With the popularity of TikTok increasing, you can also find an incredible amount of short-form movie making on there, too. The possibilities are endless for this art form.
Once the world opens up again, you might even be feeling adventurous and want to check out this list of Short Film Festivals around the globe!