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• 1888 — Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge — possibly the first movies ever, and certainly the oldest known to still exist, were shot by Louis Le Prince on experimental camera.
• 1893-1895 — William K.L. Dickson, working at Thomas Edison's studio, shot Blacksmith Scene, Fred Ott's Sneeze, Carmencita, The Great Sandow, and others — The first commercial movies ever. Dickson Experimental Sound Film, the first sound picture, and The Execution of Mary Stuart, the first cinematic special effects, were also produced at the studio. In 1897, it introduced the world to the first pornographic movie with The Dolorita Passion Dance or Dolorita in the Passion Dance. The film was removed from Atlantic City Kinetoscope parlors in 1895, this being perhaps the first instance of film Censorship.
• 1895-1896 — The Lumière brothers shot movies, including The Sprinkler Sprinkled, Employees Leaving the Factory, and Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, establishing tropes such as the Practical Joke, Faux Documentary, and cinematic narrative in general.
• 1898-1905 — Georges Méliès shot pioneering movies, establishing many kinds of Special Effects and the first filmed examples of genres such as Science Fiction and Fantasy:
  • The Four Troublesome Heads
  • The Man with the Rubber Head

• A Trip To The Moon

• The Impossible Voyage
• The Black Imp,

• 1903 — Edwin Porter directed The Great Train Robbery (video link) at Edison's studio.
• 1906 — The first ever feature-length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, was filmed in Melbourne, Australia. Of course, in 1906, "feature-length" meant about forty-five minutes long, which was still many times longer than any other film made at that point. (Interestingly, The Story of the Kelly Gang was originally planned as a short film, but its runtime ballooned out as the film-makers kept adding more and more footage.)

• 1908-1914 — D.W. Griffith directed lots of short films, inventing and/or popularizing more Camera Tricks and other film tropes, such as:
  • A Corner in Wheat, one of the first movies to use Camera Tricks to make social commentary points;
  • The Girl and Her Trust, an early suspense/action film with a climactic Chase Scene and a panic room scene that would make MacGyver proud;
  • The Musketeers of Pig Alley, the first gangster film; and
  • Judith of Bethulia.
• 1911-1914 — Winsor McCay makes the first animated films, including Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur.
• 1912 — The Cameraman's Revenge, one of the first examples of stop-motion animation.
• 1912 — Saved From the Titanic, made just a month after the Titanic sank this very early Disaster Movie (now unfortunately lost) is notable for being partly shot in colour, being Very Loosely Based on a True Story and for having a lead actress (Dorothy Gibson) who was herself a Titantic survivor - playing a version of herself!

Pre-1920 majors

• D.W. Griffith directed some of the earliest feature films, including:

• The Birth of a Nation — Groundbreaking cinematography, but horrendously racist plot.
• Intolerance — Equally impressive cinematography, but with a much more palatable plot.
• Broken Blossoms — Notably sympathetic portrayal of Chinese people for its time, but of course they were played by white actors.

• Charlie Chaplin produced and starred in a series of pioneering Slapstick comedies at Mutual studios and First National studios, including:

• The Adventurer
• The Cure
• A Dogs Life
• Easy Street
• The Immigrant
• The Rink
• Shoulder Arms

• Fantomas (Serial, made over several years.)

• Anders als die Andern ("Different from the Others"), notable as the first film to argue for tolerance of homosexuality.
• The Master Mystery
• The Secret Garden — Starring Lila Lee.
• The Sentimental Bloke — Australian classic, recently re-mastered and available on DVD.