1829 Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau develops and markets the Phenakistiscope, a small toy that provides the illusion of moving pictures
1884 George Eastman begins experimenting with celluloid roll film
1889 William Kennedy Laurie Dickson develops the Kinetophonograph while working for Thomas Alva Edison
1890-91 The earliest whole film on record at the Library of Congress, Fred Ott's Sneeze, is shot; Edison applies for patents for the Kinetograph (his motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (his peephole viewer)
1893 Edison's machines debut at the Chicago World's Fair
1894 Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumi?re and Louis Jean Lumi?re develop the Cin?matographe, a portable, crank operated camera
1895 The Lumi?re brothers shoot their first film, Workers Leaving the Lumi?re Factory, the first movie theatre opens in Paris on 28 December, and the Lumi?res show several films there
1896 The first public showing of a motion picture to a paying audience occurs on 23 April in New York, featuring Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope
French producer-director Alice Guy (1873-1968), the world?s first woman filmmaker, exhibits her film La F?e aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy) at the International Exhibition in Paris. Some historians contend this was the first fictional film.
1902 Georges M?li?s shoots A Trip to the Moon, marking the first significant use of both narrative and special effects in a film
1903 Edwin S. Porter shoots The Great Train Robbery, which features the infamous sequence of a train racing towards the camera which causes viewers to believe that the train is actually coming off the screen towards them
1905 Cecil Hepworth shoots Rescued by Rover
1908 The major American motion picture companies form the Motion Picture Patents Company and usher in the Trust War; by 1915 the company will no longer exist and smaller studios will be the main producers of motion pictures; the National Board of Censorship is founded; D. W. Griffith begins directing films for Biograph; the French film company Film d'Art begins producing films; Charles Urban patents a color photographic process called Kinemacolor
1912 Mack Sennett begins producing comedie shorts for the Keystone Company
1913 Cecil B. De Mille begins making films
1914-15 Griffith shoots The Birth of a Nation, Charlie Chaplin begins working at Keystone
1915 American director Julia Crawford Ivers becomes the first woman general manager of a Hollywood studio, Bosworth, Inc.
American Viola Lawrence (d. 1973), considered the first female film editor, begins her career. She will later work with such noted Hollywood directors as John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles.
Lois Weber (1882-1939), the first consistently successful American woman filmmaker, is hired by Universal Studios at the then-astounding salary of $5,000 per week. She is the highest-paid director at Universal and the highest-paid woman director of the silent era.
1916 Canadian-born actress Mary Pickford (1893-1979) creates the Mary Pickford Film Corporation in Hollywood, becoming the first movie star to form and own a film company.
1917 The Technicolor Corporation is founded in the United States and begins experimenting with color film
1919 The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is released, bringing the German Expressionist movement to film; Lev Kuleshov helps found the Moscow Film School, which eventually leads to the development of the montage, United Artists is formed by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks; Louis Delluc and Ricciotto Canudo found the first of many French societies for the preservation and presentation of the great films of the past, and the notion of the cin?aste (devotee of film) is born
1920s Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Laurel and Hardy begin making films as the Golden Age of Comedy begins
American actress Lillian Gish (1896-1993) makes her only foray into directing with Remodeling Her Husband. In an ?all-woman? production, Gish co-writes the screenplay with her sister Dorothy, who also stars, and recruits the American writer Dorothy Parker to write the intertitles.
1921 Chaplin shoots The Kid
1922 Will H. Hays becomes president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America; Robert Flaherty shoots Nanook of the North; F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu is released
1924 Erich von Stroheim's Greed is released: von Stroheim's original 7-plus hour version is cut down to 2Vi that contain only one-quarter of footage shot by von Stroheim; John Ford makes his first western; Murnau's The Last Laugh is released
1925 Sergei M. Eisenstein shoots Potemkin; Chaplin shoots The Gold Rush; Alfred Hitchcock directs his first film, The Pleasure Garden
1926 Fritz Lang's Metropolis is released; Keaton shoots The General
German-born British filmmaker Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) creates the first full-length animated film Die Geschichte des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed), working in Germany and using silhouette figures made out of cardboard, tin, and paper.
1927 The Sound Era begins when The Jazz Singer opens on 6 October featuring a synchronized soundtrack on its musical numbers; Abel Gance's Napol?on is released at 270 minutes (the film is later restored to its original 5-hour length and re-released in 1981)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded on 4 May.
1928 The first all-talking film, The Lights of New York, is released; Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie is released; Carl-Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is released
1929 The First Academy Awards presentation is held on 16 May; Luis Bu?uel and Salvador Dali release Un Chien andalou; the Marx Brothers make their first movie, Cocoanuts
1930s Mae West and W. C. Fields begin making popular comedies
1930 The Hollywood Production Code is drafted by Martin Quigley and Daniel Lord, S J., and is put into use; the Studio Era (1930-1945) begins in Hollywood; the Era of the French Film (1930-1940) begins; Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel is released
1931 Tod Browning's Dracula is released; Ren? Clair's A Nous la libert? is released; Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise is released
1932 George Cukor begins directing films for MGM and RKO
1933 Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack make King Kong
mid-1930s The television is introduced and the movies declare war
1935 Ford has his first major hit with The Informer, Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is released
1937 Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion is released
1938 Disney's first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is released
American costume designer Edith Head (1897-1981) becomes the first woman to head a studio design department, when she attains the post of chief designer at Paramount Studio. Over the course of her long career, Head is nominated for 35 Academy Awards, and wins the award eight times, garnering her more Oscars than any other designer in history.
Olympia, Leni Riefenstahl?s documentary about the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, makes its premiere on Adolf Hitler?s birthday.
1939 Hitchcock relocates to America; Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are released
The first Cannes International Film Festival is held in the resort town of Cannes, France, with opening night on 1 September.
1940 Ford shoots The Grapes of Wrath
1941 Orson Welles makes Citizen Kane, John Huston shoots The Maltese Falcon, Disney releases Fantasia
1943-45 Marcel Carn?'s Les Enfants du paradis is released
1945 Roberto Rossellini's Roma, Citt? Aperta is released, beginning the Neorealist Movement; the Motion Picture Export Association of America is founded to introduce American films in the global market
1946 Ford's My Darling Clementine is released; Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is released; Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is released
1947 The first hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigating Communist infiltration in the motion picture industry begin; the Czech film school, the F.A.M.U., is founded; Satyajit Ray helps found the first film society in India, the Calcutta Film Society
1948 Howard Hawks's Red River is released; Vitto-rio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief is released; Max Ophiils's Letter from an Unknown Woman is released; the Polish Lodz Film School is founded in Poland
1950s Hollywood converts to color film; the Studio System collapses, necessitating that the director function as a producer as well-resulting in the increased production of teenage exploitation films to insure that monies spent are recouped; the drive-in becomes a popular place to view a movie; several types of films gain prominence, including the gangster, western, musical (which would fade by the mid-1950s), and science fiction film, as well as those labelled film noir, ?trash? films are shot in France, such as the films of Joseph E. Le vine, dubbed into English, then mass released in American theaters
1950 Bu?uel's Los olvidados is released; Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is released; Ophiils's La Ronde is released; Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest is released; Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon is released and sparks intense popularity of films from the East in the West, beginning Japan's richest cinematic era (1950s)
1951 The second HUAC hearings begin, resulting in the Hollywood Black Lists; when ruling on the ?Miracle? case (Burstyn v. Wilson, named ?Miracle? after the Rossellini film The Miracle) the Supreme Court declares that motion pictures are part of the nation's press and are therefore guaranteed freedom of speech; Christian Nyby's The Thing is released; Paramount establishes a television-producing division, Screen Gems; Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire is released; Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still is released; Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris is released.
The first Berlin International Film Festival is held.
1952 Hollywood begins producing 3-D movies en masse in an attempt to compete with television; the Cinerama process is introduced to fiimgoers; Chaplin's Limelight is released, becoming his last film produced in America; Fred Zinnemann's High Noon is released; Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly release Singin' in the Rain
1953 Cinemascope becomes a popular technique for recording motion pictures when the first Cinemascope feature, The Robe, is released; war is declared against the Production Code when Otto Preminger's The Moon Is Blue is released without approval; Laslo Benedek's The Wild One is released, ushering in an age of rebellious youth films; Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street is released; Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu monogatari (Ugets?) is released.
Japanese director-actress Kinuyo Tanaka (1910-77) directs Koibumi (Love Letters), becoming the first Japanese female director.
1954 Cukor's A Star Is Born is released; Kazan's On the Waterfront is released; Hitchcock's Rear Window is released; Federico Fellini's La Strada is released; Kurosawa's Shichinin no samurai (Seven samurai) is released
1955 Satyajit Ray's Path er Panchali (Father Panch alt) is released and leads to the short-lived Era of the Indian Cinema; Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a Cause is released; Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques is released; Godzilla is released in Japan, sparking the mutant monster movie genre; the Era of the Polish Cinema begins (1955-1964)
1956 Hollywood sells its first film to television, effectively ending its long-standing war with the small box; Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is released; Ford's The Searchers is released; Roger Vadim's Et...Dieu cr?a la femme is released; Satyajit Ray's Aparajito (The Unvanquished) is released
1957 Hitchcock's Vertigo is released; Ingmar Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seat) and Smultronst?llet (Wild Strawberries) are released; David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai is released; Kurosawa's Kumonosu-jo (The Throne of Blood) is released
1958 Bergman's Ansiktet (The Magician) is released; Andrzej Wajda's Popi?l i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) is released
1959 Wilder's Some Like it Hot is released; at the suggestion of Rossellini, Cahiers du cin?ma critics Fran?ois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol begin seriously making films and the ?New Wave? begins; Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) is released; Godard 's A bout de souffle (Breathless) is released; Alain Resnais's Hiroshima monamouris released; Jack Clayton's Room at the Top is released and becomes an international breakthrough for working-class British films; Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) is released
late 1950s-early 1960s The ?auteur theory? of directorial control is simultaneously developed in America by Andrew Sarris and in France by Fran?ois Truffaut; Sarris later solidifies his views with the publication of The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 in 1968
1960 Hitchcock shoots Psycho-, Kurosawa's Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) is released
1961 Truffaut's fuies et flm is released; Bu?uel's Viridiana is released
1962 Lean's Lawrence of Arabia is released
1963 The Czech New Wave (1963-1969) begins; Fellini's 8V2?S released; Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove:
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released
1964 Sergio Leone makes his first ?spaghetti western,? A Fistful of Dollars, with Clint Eastwood; Richard Lester directs the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night) Roman Polanksi's Repulsion is released
1965 Godard's Alphaville is released; Lean's Doctor Zhivago is released; Milos Forman's L?skyjedn? plavovl?sky (Loves of a Blonde) is released
1966 Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up is released; Bergman's Persona is released; Jan Nemec's O slavnosti a hostech (Report on the Party and the Guests) is released; Jiri Menzel's Ostre sledovan? vlaky (Closely Watched Trains) is released
1967 Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde is released, defining the Hollywood Renaissance and bringing prominence to the independent American cinema; Jacques Tati's Playtime is released; Mike Nichols' The Graduate is released
1968 The war against the Production Code ends when the Code and Rating Administration replaces the Production Code Administration and the maturity rating system is established, including the ratings G for general audiences and M for mature audiences; Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is released
1969 John Schlesingers Midnight Cowboy is released; Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is released
late 1960s Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders enjoy critical, and some popular, success as the German cinema enjoys a renaissance
1970s The Motion Picture Rating System is developed and replaces the maturity rating system-the new ratings include G for general audiences, PG which suggests parental guidance, R for restricted to those over 18, and X which was left over from the maturity rating system and was eventually adopted by the pornography industry and discarded by the Motion Picture Rating System for use on general release films
1971 Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout is released and brings attention to the Australian cinema; Louis Malle's
Le Souffle au coeur is released; Peter Bogdano-vich's The Last Picture Show is released
1972 Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather is released and a renewed fascination with the romanticism of crime begins
1974 Roman Polanksi's Chinatown is released; Coppola's The Godfather, Part II is released; Fassbinder's Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) is released
1975 Steven Spielberg's Jaws is released and begins the era of the blockbuster film; Robert Altman's Nashville is released
1976 Martin Scorsese releases Taxi Driver, Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 is released
1977 George Lucas's Star Wars is released; Woody Allen's Annie Hall is released; Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo is released; Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind is released
1978 Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is released
1979 Allen's Manhattan is released; Coppola's Apocalypse Now is released; Scorsese shoots Raging Bull
late 1970s Several advancements in moviemaking, such as the Dolby system, and constant advancements in the field of special effects, succeed in making seeing a movie an event again and, when added to the popularity of the blockbuster film, give rise to the Hollywood years
1980 The Hollywood years begin, characterized by several sub-genres of films that are aimed at a very specific demographic and designed to turn a profit, such as the Friday the 13th movies parts 1-9, and the rest of the slasher film genre
1981 Istv?n Szab?'s Mephisto is released
1983 Shohei Imamura's Narayama bushi-ko (The Ballad of Narayamd) is released.
Barbra Streisand (1942?) is the first woman to produce, direct, co-write, star in, and sing in a major motion picture, performing multiple roles in her film Yentl.
1984 Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is released and results in a new rating of PG-13 (not recommended for children under 13).
1985 The first Sundance Film Festival is held in Sundance, Utah, bringing attention to the world of independent filmmakers.
1986 David Lynch's Blue Velvet is released; Spielberg's The Color Purple is released.
1988 American filmmaker Penny Marshall (1942?) directs the box-office smash Big.
late 1980s Rapid growth of cable television, pay-per-view premium channels, and home video once again threatens movie attendance
1990s The major studios respond to the persistent threat of television by either purchasing or, once again, launching their own networks
1990 The first studio-released NC-17 movie is shown, disallowing anyone under 17
1993 Spielberg's Jurassic Park and Schindlern List are released, Jurassic Park becomes the highest grossing movie of all time and Schindlern List gives Spielberg his first Oscars, for Best Director and Best Picture
1994 The Motion Picture Export Association of America changes its name to the Motion Picture Association
1995 Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is released and signals the cinemaphile modernist movement, which is characterized by movies made by filmmakers who were raised on movies and consequently make extensive use of filmic allusions in their own films
1997 Five independent films are nominated for Best Picture at the 1996 Academy Awards.
1999 NetFlix is launched.
2001 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and director Peter Jackson?s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring premier.
DVD sales exceed VHS videotape sales.
2010 Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman ever to win the Oscar for best director for The Hurt Locker