i just read a history of filmmaking which i would like to share with you

filmmaking began at the turn of the century, and the biggest contributor to fillmmaking was, surprise, surprise! Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison invented a lot of the basic principles that we use today (techwise that is) Edison first made money by setting up a lot of nickelodeons, which surprise, surprise, was catered towards the working man (which simply means the popcorn movie is the original movie in the first place! =) the lumiere brothers in france copied edison and thus developed filmmaking in france.

the first notable director of film (after edison) is Melies. Melies is a genius. He created lotsa special effects like flying heads, shrinking, growing, disappearing. But most important of all, he created editing.

Porter followed Melies' editing but he did it even one step better, he created longer more complex stories with things synonymously happening at the same time. The Great Train Robbery is his famous film.

After that we have D.W. Griffith. Though amusing Southern Confederate in tone. D.W. Griffith began the epic films. His most famous is Birth of A Nation.

After him we have the epic film director of them all, Cecil B. De Mille. Who I most remember for the Ten Commandments.

Also in the 20's we have Mack Sennett, who developed the Keystone Cops and also developed a young star named Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin eventually became his own great star and director.

After the happy 20's came the 30's and the Depression. The Depression made a lot of films that were escapists, thus we have the musicals (synonymously of course with the development of sound)

oh yeah, please let me backtrack a bit

in germany during the 1920's a kind of Volk (folk) art filmmaking developed that delved into their german legends and stories. thus we have cabinet of dr. caligari (Tim Burton's style!)

in russia we have eisenstein. russians like to edit a lot coz they couldn't afford film. so they just edited a lot. Watch Battleship Potemkin.

anyway, back to america, in the 1940's they obviously made war movies, which carried on to the fifties

the fifities, well hmmm, all i can see here are plaid shirts and knee-high socks, but anyway later na lang yan

the 60's was interesting, welcome to the world of psychidelic films

the 70's was full of angry, gross, painful art films. a scary time to live in (which is probaby why it had disco which is insanely the opposite)

the 80's had many family break up movies

and the 90's has many super blockbuster box office and budget movies.

now the 2000's? what will define it? obviously digital video. more movies will be made than ever before. and amazingly they will be done in our backyards, garages and basements. we will see more reality tv and more honest filmmaking than we've ever seen before. it should be a riot

hence, my short run-through on film history (more american, of course)

everyone please add, coz i just wanted to get this thread started =)