IN THE BEGINNING (PART TWO)

In the first part of this resource we have looked at how we understand still images. We started at the very beginning of painting, in those caves deep underground in France.

Let’s now look at another darkened room (which we mentioned earlier) – the cinema.

TASK

Look at these two early examples of film – moving images. They are complete films and were first shown in 1895 and 1904, so there was only seven years between the two films being made.

We want you to apply those key questions again – the what, why, when, where, how– to these two early films.

Once you have done this we want you to think about the purpose of these two films – what was each trying to do? What were they trying to convey to an audience? Were your questions then same about each of the films or were they the same questions?