History of Cinema

Summary

Cinema can be defined as the art of performed act, intended to entertain an audience. Most people think of cinema as being of a very recent origin. In its true entirety, cinema is however, an ancient entity that has existed with us since 3 millennia at least. It could have existed prior to beginnings of our organised societies and settlements at least during the time when humans were still populating planet earth, but its modern inception can be thought of as originating during the late 1800s.

Cinema has always been one of the most important mediums of communicating a theme through visuals and acts. It serves as the approach of convincing people on a certain topic; and that is why we have movies and motion pictures on a wide variety of genres and topics. Cinema has primarily been a medium of education and entertainment, both served with a well intended purpose.

Cinema is also an often confused and overlooked subject. Most people relate cinema only to visuals and the art of motion picture development. This is however, not fully correct since cinema itself comprises of several ‘forms’ of acts like plays, skits, presentations or simply showcasing a motion entity. In current times, thousands of cinematic are released every day, in every language and form available and imaginable. Cinematic thus do not just relate to developing a motion picture, although that forms a major part of it.

To understand the true meaning behind cinema, one needs to go back as early as the 5th century BC when the Greeks were one of the first civilised folk to introduce and develop cinema and distinguish it as a separate form of art. Later on, the Romans, upon the foundations already laid down by the Greeks, developed this field further and made it a mainstream art comprising of plays and presentations that will go on to encompass almost whole of Europe during the middle ages when iconic personalities like Shakespeare wrote and executed some of the finest plays and presentations. Our modern day cinema is a legacy of thousands of years of accumulation of development in theatrical arts.