"The Cinema is an invention without a future", declared Louis Lumiere who together with his brother, Auguste, pioneered what was to develop into an international cultural industry.The Lumiere brothers were the inventors of the "cinematographe", a compact and portable machine that with a few adjustments could be used as a camera or projector or printing machine. As professional photographers themselves, cinema for them was no more than an extension of photography; hence they sought to capture events from a static position and therefore from a single point of view, in brief 'actualities' such as: the arrival of a train, a train leaving the station, workers leaving a factory, a sea bath, ladies and soldiers on wheels. Like still photographers, these 'living photographic pictures' were no more than attempts to reproduce reality. They narrated no story, but reproduced a place, time and atmosphere. These brief moving reproductions were therefore termed 'actualities'. It was another pioneer, the French magician Georges Melies who was to revolutionise the cinema from being a 'photoplay' to a mass medium for the creation of fantasies and dreams. Several of his creations had the words 'nightmare' or 'dream' in their titles. He used elaborate sets and editing techniques to make science fiction films like "Voyage to the Moon" in 1902. So while the Lumiere brothers laid the foundation of realism in cinema, Melies pointed the way to 'expressionism' and to the magic of cinema. The Lumieres' realism introduced cinema to the 'mise en scene' while Melies pioneered the technique of 'stop motion photography' to create magical special effects in his many 'trick films'. Elaborate stage sets and special effects were the hallmarks of his films. It is the historical tension between traditions of realism and traditions of expressionism that is at the heart of the aesthetics of cinema.
This was an attempt to focus on emergence of the concept of cinema.... Today, cinema industry is the most glamorous industry....
