The Beginnings and History of Cinema

34 min readJul 8, 2023

Definition:-

Cinematography (comes from ancient greek where cinema “kìnema” = movement and graphy “gràphein” = to write or to draw) is the art of motion picture, photography, and filmmaking either electronically using an image sensor or chemically using a light-sensitive material such as film stock.

Film, also called movie or motion picture or (less widely) The Seventh Art, is a visual art form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere, using recorded or programmed moving images, along with sound (and more rarely) other sensory stimulations. The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it.

The name “film” originates from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay, and flick. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Common terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the silver screen, the movies, and cinema; the last of these is commonly used, as an overarching term, in scholarly texts and critical essays. In the early years, the word sheet was sometimes used instead of screen.

Mechanism:-

Cinematographers use a lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sensor or light-sensitive material inside a movie camera. These exposures are created sequentially and preserved for later processing and viewing as a motion picture. Capturing images with an electronic image sensor produces an electrical charge for each pixel in the image, which is electronically processed and stored in a video file for subsequent processing or display. Images captured with photographic emulsion result in a series of invisible latent images on the film stock, which are chemically “developed” into a visible image. The images on the film stock are projected for viewing the motion picture.

The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, using CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects.

Traditionally, films were recorded onto celluloid film through a photochemical process and then shown through a movie projector on a large screen. Contemporary films are often fully digital through the entire process of production, distribution, and exhibition, while films recorded in a photochemical form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack (a graphic recording of the spoken words, music, and other sounds that accompany the images which run along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it, and is not projected).

The individual images that make up a film are called frames. In the projection of traditional celluloid films, a rotating shutter causes intervals of darkness as each frame, in turn, is moved into position to be projected, but the viewer does not notice the interruptions because of an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after its source disappears. The perception of motion is partly due to a psychological effect called the phi phenomenon.

Uses:-

Cinematography finds uses in many fields of science and business as well as for entertainment purposes and mass communication.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions through the use of dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into other languages.

Production:-

At its core, the means to produce a film depend on the content the filmmaker wishes to show, and the apparatus for displaying it: the zoetrope merely requires a series of images on a strip of paper. Film production can, therefore, take as little as one person with a camera (or even without a camera, as in Stan Brakhage’s 1963 film Mothlight), or thousands of actors, extras, and crew members for a live-action, feature-length epic.

The necessary steps for almost any film can be boiled down to conception, planning, execution, revision, and distribution. The more involved the production, the more significant each of the steps becomes. In a typical production cycle of a Hollywood-style film, these main stages are defined as development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution.

This production cycle usually takes three years. The first year is taken up with development. The second year comprises preproduction and production. The third year, post-production and distribution. The bigger the production, the more resources it takes, and the more important financing becomes; most feature films are artistic works from the creators’ perspective (e.g., film director, cinematographer, screenwriter) and for-profit business entities for the production companies.

Film crew:-

A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, to produce a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast as the cast is understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew is also separate from the producers as the producers are the ones who own a portion of either the film company or the film’s intellectual property rights. A film crew is divided into different departments, each of which specializes in a specific aspect of the production. Film crew positions have evolved over the years, spurred by technological change, but many traditional jobs date from the early 20th century and are common across jurisdictions and film-making cultures.

Motion picture projects have three discrete stages: development, production, and distribution. Within the production stage, there are also three clearly defined sequential phases — pre-production, principal photography, and post-production — and many film crew positions are associated with only one or two of the phases. Distinctions are also made between above-the-line personnel (such as the director, the screenwriter, and the producers) who begin their involvement during the project’s development stage, and the below-the-line “technical” crew involved only with the production stage.

Cinema History:-

In the 1830s, moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks, with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (phenakistoscope) in Belgium, and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain, Which are pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion.

In 1845, Francis Ronalds invented the first successful camera able to make continuous recordings of the varying indications of meteorological and geomagnetic instruments over time. The cameras were supplied to numerous observatories around the world and some remained in use until well into the 20th century.

*The first successful camera for making continuous recordings of scientific instruments was built by Francis Ronalds in 1845. This example is an electrograph measuring atmospheric electricity*

William Lincoln patented a device, in 1867, which showed animated pictures called the “wheel of life” or “zoopraxiscope”. In it, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit.

*Black-and-white picture of a coloured zoopraxiscope disc, circa 1893 by Eadweard Muybridge and Erwin F. Faber*

On 19 June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named “Sallie Gardner” in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse’s, and each camera shutter was controlled by a trip wire triggered by the horse’s hooves. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one-thousandth of a second. At the end of the decade, Muybridge had adapted sequences of his photographs to a zoopraxiscope for short, primitive projected “movies,” which were sensations on his lecture tours by 1879 or 1880.

Nine years later, in 1882, French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey invented a chronophotographic gun, which was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, recording all the frames of the same picture.

*The chronophotographic gun invented by Étienne-Jules Marey.*

The late nineteenth to the early twentieth century brought rise to the use of film not only for entertainment purposes but for scientific exploration as well. French biologist and filmmaker Jean Painleve lobbied heavily for the use of film in the scientific field, as the new medium was more efficient in capturing and documenting the behavior, movement, and environment of microorganisms, cells, and bacteria, than the naked eye. The introduction of film into scientific fields allowed for not only the viewing “new images and objects, such as cells and natural objects, but also the viewing of them in real time”,whereas prior to the invention of moving pictures, scientists and doctors alike had to rely on hand-drawn sketches of human anatomy and its microorganisms. This posed a great inconvenience in the science and medical worlds. The development of film and increased usage of cameras allowed doctors and scientists to grasp a better understanding and knowledge of their projects.

The experimental film Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14th, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, England, is the earliest surviving motion picture. This movie was shot on paper film.

In 1891, the inventor Thomas Edison, together with William Dickson, a young laboratory assistant, came out with what they called the kinetoscope, a device that would become the predecessor to the motion picture projector. The kinetoscope was a cabinet with a window through which individual viewers could experience the illusion of a moving image. This camera took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated onto a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide with a sequence of images on it was rapidly spooled between a lightbulb and a lens, creating the illusion of motion. The results of this work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus also designed by Dickson, the Kinetoscope. Contained within a large box, only one person at a time looking into it through a peephole could view the movie.

As the kinetoscope gained popularity, the Edison Company began installing machines in hotel lobbies, amusement parks, and penny arcades, and soon kinetoscope parlors — where customers could pay around 25 cents for admission to a bank of machines — had opened around the country. However, when friends and collaborators suggested that Edison find a way to project his kinetoscope images for audience viewing, he apparently refused, claiming that such an invention would be a less profitable

Because Edison hadn’t secured an international patent for his invention, variations of the kinetoscope were soon being copied and distributed throughout Europe. This new form of entertainment was an instant success, and a number of mechanics and inventors, seeing an opportunity, began toying with methods of projecting the moving images onto a larger screen. However, it was the invention of two brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière — photographic goods manufacturers in Lyon, France — that saw the most commercial success.

In 1895, Charles Francis Jenkins and his projector, the Phantoscope, made a successful audience viewing while the brothers patented the Cinématographe (from which we get the term cinema), a lightweight film projector that also functioned as a camera and printer. Unlike the Edison kinetograph, the Cinématographe was lightweight enough for easy outdoor filming, and over the years the brothers used the camera to take well over 1,000 short films, most of which depicted scenes from everyday life. In December 1895, in the basement lounge of the Grand Café, Rue des Capucines in Paris, the Lumières held the world’s first ever commercial film screening, a sequence of about 10 short scenes, including the brother’s first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, a segment lasting less than a minute and depicting workers leaving the family’s photographic instrument factory at the end of the day.

*Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory: One of the first films viewed by an audience.*

Believing that audiences would get bored watching scenes that they could just as easily observe on a casual walk around the city, Louis Lumière claimed that the cinema was “an invention without a future. but a demand for motion pictures grew at such a rapid rate that soon representatives of the Lumière company were traveling throughout Europe and the world, showing half-hour screenings of the company’s films. While cinema initially competed with other popular forms of entertainment — circuses, vaudeville acts, theater troupes, magic shows, and many others — eventually it would supplant these various entertainments as the main commercial attraction. Within a year of the Lumières’ first commercial screening, competing film companies were offering moving-picture acts in music halls and vaudeville theaters across Great Britain. In the United States, the Edison Company, having purchased the rights to an improved projecter that they called the Vitascope, the first commercially successful projector in the U.S, held their first film screening in April 1896 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in Herald Square, New York City. And In the same year, movie theaters were open in France (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nice, Marseille); Italy (Rome, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Venice, Bologna, Forlì); Brussels; and London. The chronological improvements in the medium may be listed concisely.

By the close of the 19th century, as public excitement over the moving picture’s novelty gradually wore off, filmmakers were also beginning to experiment with film’s possibilities as a medium in itself (not simply, as it had been regarded up until then, as a tool for documentation, analogous to the camera or the phonograph). Technical innovations allowed filmmakers like Parisian cinema owner Georges Méliès to experiment with special effects that produced seemingly magical transformations on screen: flowers turned into women, people disappeared with puffs of smoke, a man appeared where a woman had just been standing, and other similar tricks.

Not only did Méliès, a former magician, invent the “trick film,” which producers in England and the United States began to imitate, but he was also the one to tranform cinema into the narrative medium it is today. Whereas before, filmmakers had only ever created single-shot films that lasted a minute or less, Méliès began joining these short films together to create stories. His 30-scene Trip to the Moon (1902), a film based on a Jules Verne novel, may have been the most widely seen production in cinema’s first decade. However, Méliès never developed his technique beyond treating the narrative film as a staged theatrical performance; his camera, representing the vantage point of an audience facing a stage, never moved during the filming of a scene.

*Georges Méliès’ Trip to the Moon was one of the first films to incorporate fantasy elements and to use “trick” filming techniques, both of which heavily influenced future filmmakers.*

Edwin S. Porter, an innovative filmmaker a projectionist and engineer for the Edison Company made a 12-minute film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), that broke with the stagelike compositions of Méliès-style films through its use of editing, camera pans, rear projections, and diagonally composed shots that produced a continuity of action. Not only did The Great Train Robbery establish the realistic narrative as a standard in cinema, it was also the first major box-office hit. Its success paved the way for the growth of the film industry, as investors, recognizing the motion picture’s great moneymaking potential, began opening the first permanent film theaters around the country.

Known as nickelodeons because of their 5-cent admission charge, these early motion picture theaters, often housed in converted storefronts, were especially popular among the working class of the time, who couldn’t afford live theater. Between 1904 and 1908, around 9,000 nickelodeons appeared in the United States. It was the nickelodeon’s popularity that established film as a mass entertainment medium.

In 1905 Cooper Hewitt invented mercury lamps which made it practical to shoot films indoors without sunlight. In 1906 the first animated cartoon was produced.

As the demand for motion pictures grew, production companies were created to meet it. At the peak of nickelodeon popularity in 1910 there were 20 or so major motion picture companies in the United States. However, heated disputes often broke out among these companies over patent rights and industry control, leading even the most powerful among them to fear fragmentation that would loosen their hold on the market. Because of these concerns, the 10 leading companies — including Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, and others — formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in 1908. The MPPC was a trade group that pooled the most significant motion picture patents and established an exclusive contract between these companies and the Eastman Kodak Company as a supplier of film stock. Also known as the Trust, the MPPC’s goal was to standardize the industry and shut out competition through monopolistic control. Under the Trust’s licensing system, only certain licensed companies could participate in the exchange, distribution, and production of film at different levels of the industry — a shut-out tactic that eventually backfired, leading the excluded, independent distributors to organize in opposition to the Trust.

In these early years, theaters were still running single-reel films, which came at a standard length of 1,000 feet, allowing for about 16 minutes of playing time. However, companies began to import multiple-reel films from European producers around 1907, In 1911 Credits began to appear at the beginning of motion pictures. and in 1912 the format gained popular acceptance in the United States with Louis Mercanton’s highly successful Queen Elizabeth, a three-and-a-half reel “feature,” starring the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. As exibitors began to show more features — as the multiple-reel film came to be called — they discovered a number of advantages over the single-reel short. For one thing, audiences saw these longer films as special events and were willing to pay more for admission, and because of the popularity of the feature narratives, features generally experienced longer runs in theaters than their single-reel predecessors.

In the same year 1912, Méliès released his last commercially successful production, The Conquest of the Pole, and from then on, he lost audiences to filmmakers who were experimenting with more sophisticated techniques like Edwin S. Additionally, the feature film gained popularity among the middle classes, who saw its length as analogous to the more “respectable” entertainment of live theater. Following the example of the French film d’art, U.S. feature producers often took their material from sources that would appeal to a wealthier and better educated audience, such as histories, literature, and stage productions.

As it turns out, the feature film was one factor that brought about the eventual downfall of the MPPC. The inflexible structuring of the Trust’s exhibition and distribution system made the organization resistant to change. When movie studio, and Trust member, Vitagraph began to release features like A Tale of Two Cities (1911) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1910), the Trust forced it to exhibit the films serially in single-reel showings to keep with industry standards. The MPPC also underestimated the appeal of the star system, a trend that began when producers chose famous stage actors like Mary Pickford and James O’Neill to play the leading roles in their productions and to grace their advertising posters. Because of the MPPC’s inflexibility, independent companies were the only ones able to capitalize on two important trends that were to become film’s future: single-reel features and star power. Today, few people would recognize names like Vitagraph or Biograph, but the independents that outlasted them — Universal, Goldwyn (which would later merge with Metro and Mayer), Fox (later 20th Century Fox), and Paramount (the later version of the Lasky Corporation) — have become household names.

As moviegoing increased in popularity among the middle class, and as the feature films began keeping audiences in their seats for longer periods of time, exhibitors found a need to create more comfortable and richly decorated theater spaces to attract their audiences. These “dream palaces,” so called because of their often lavish embellishments of marble, brass, guilding, and cut glass, not only came to replace the nickelodeon theater, but also created the demand that would lead to the Hollywood studio system. Some producers realized that the growing demand for new work could only be met if the films were produced on a regular, year-round system. However, this was impractical with the current system that often relied on outdoor filming and was predominately based in Chicago and New York — two cities whose weather conditions prevented outdoor filming for a significant portion of the year. Different companies attempted filming in warmer locations such as Florida, Texas, and Cuba, but the place where producers eventually found the most success was a small, industrial suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood.

Hollywood proved to be an ideal location for a number of reasons. Not only was the climate temperate and sunny year-round, but the land was plentiful and cheap, and the location allowed close access to a number of diverse topographies: mountains, lakes, deserts, coasts, and forests. By 1915, more than 60 percent of U.S. film production was centered in Hollywood. Porter the Bell and Howell 2709 movie camera invented in 1915 allowed directors to make close-ups without physically moving the camera.

While the development of narrative film was largely driven by commercial factors, it is also important to acknowledge the role of individual artists who turned it into a medium of personal expression. The motion picture of the silent era was generally simplistic in nature; acted in overly animated movements to engage the eye; and accompanied by live music, played by musicians in the theater, and written titles to create a mood and to narrate a story. Within the confines of this medium, one filmmaker in particular emerged to transform the silent film into art and to unlock its potential as a medium of serious expression and persuasion.

D. W. Griffith, who entered the film industry as an actor in 1907, quickly moved to a directing role in which he worked closely with his camera crew to experiment with shots, angles, and editing techniques that could heighten the emotional intensity of his scenes. He found that by practicing parallel editing, in which a film alternates between two or more scenes of action, he could create an illusion of simultaneity. He could then heighten the tension of the film’s drama by alternating between cuts more and more rapidly until the scenes of action converged. Griffith used this technique to great effect in his controversial film The Birth of a Nation. Other techniques that Griffith employed to new effect included panning shots, through which he was able to establish a sense of scene and to engage his audience more fully in the experience of the film, and tracking shots, or shots that traveled with the movement of a scene. which allowed the audience — through the eye of the camera — to participate in the film’s action.

By the mid to late 1920s, movies began to be produced with sound, In 1925, Warner Bros. was just a small Hollywood studio looking for opportunities to expand. When representatives from Western Electric offered to sell the studio the rights to a new technology they called Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that had failed to capture the interest of any of the industry giants, Warner Bros. executives took a chance, predicting that the novelty of talking films might be a way to make a quick, short-term profit. Little did they anticipate that their gamble would not only establish them as a major Hollywood presence but also change the industry forever.

The pairing of sound with motion pictures was nothing new in itself. Edison, after all, had commisioned the kinetoscope to create a visual accompaniment to the phonograph, and many early theaters had orchestra pits to provide musical accompaniment to their films. Even the smaller picture houses with lower budgets almost always had an organ or piano. When Warner Bros. purchased Vitaphone technology, it planned to use it to provide prerecorded orchestral accompaniment for its films, thereby increasing their marketability to the smaller theaters that didn’t have their own orchestra pits. In 1926, Warner debuted the system with the release of Don Juan, a costume drama accompanied by a recording of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

By 1927, after a $3 million campaign, Warner Bros. had wired more than 150 theaters in the United States, and it released its second sound film, The Jazz Singer, in which the actor Al Jolson improvised a few lines of synchronized dialogue and sang six songs. The film was a major breakthrough. Audiences, hearing an actor speak on screen for the first time, were enchanted. While radio, a new and popular entertainment, had been drawing audiences away from the picture houses for some time, with the birth of the “talkie,” or talking film, audiences once again returned to the cinema in large numbers, lured by the promise of seeing and hearing their idols perform. By 1929, three-fourths of Hollywood films had some form of sound accompaniment, and by 1930, the silent film was a thing of the past.

From cinema’s birth in the 1880s, movies were predominantly monochrome. Contrary to popular belief, monochrome doesn’t always mean black and white; it means a movie shot in a single tone or color. Since the cost of tinted film bases was substantially higher, most movies were produced in black-and-white monochrome. Even with the advent of early color experiments, the greater expense of color meant films were mostly made in black and white

After the advent of motion pictures, a tremendous amount of energy was invested in the production of photography in natural color. The invention of the talking picture further increased the demand for the use of color photography. However, in comparison to other technological advances of the time, the arrival of color photography was a relatively slow process.

Early movies were not actually color movies since they were shot monochrome and hand-colored or machine-colored afterward. (Such movies are referred to as colored and not color.) The earliest such example is the hand-tinted Annabelle Serpentine Dance in 1895 by Edison Manufacturing Company. Machine-based tinting later became popular. Tinting continued until the advent of natural color cinematography in the 1910s. Many black and white movies have been colorized recently using digital tinting. This includes footage shot from both world wars, sporting events, and political propaganda.

In 1902, Edward Raymond Turner produced the first films with a natural color process rather than using colorization techniques. In 1908, kinemacolor was introduced. In the same year, the short film A Visit to the Seaside became the first natural color movie to be publicly presented.

In 1917, the earliest version of Technicolor was introduced. Kodachrome was introduced in 1935. And in the 1950s, Eastmancolor was introduced which was a cheaper color process allowing for more colored movies thus becoming the color standard for the rest of the century, and in some years the percentage of films shot on color film surpassed 51%. By the 1960s, color became by far the dominant film stock. In the coming decades, the usage of color film greatly increased while monochrome films became scarce. And By the 1970s, most movies were color films. IMAX and other 70mm formats gained popularity. Wide distribution of films became commonplace, setting the ground for “blockbusters.” Film cinematography dominated the motion picture industry from its inception until the 2010s when digital cinematography became dominant. Film cinematography is still used by some directors, especially in specific applications or out of fondness of the format.

In digital cinematography, the movie is shot on digital media such as flash storage, as well as distributed through a digital medium such as a hard drive.

The basis for digital cameras are metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensors. The first practical semiconductor image sensor was the charge-coupled device (CCD), based on MOS capacitor technology. Following the commercialization of CCD sensors during the late 1970s to early 1980s, the entertainment industry slowly began transitioning to digital imaging and digital video over the next two decades. The CCD was followed by the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor), developed in the 1990s.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Sony began marketing the concept of “electronic cinematography,” utilizing its analog Sony HDVS professional video cameras. The effort met with very little success. However, this led to one of the earliest digitally shot feature movies, Julia and Julia (1987). In 1998, with the introduction of HDCAM recorders and 1920×1080 pixel digital professional video cameras based on CCD technology, the idea, now re-branded as “digital cinematography,” began to gain traction.

Shot and released in 1998, The Last Broadcast is believed by some to be the first feature-length video shot and edited entirely on consumer-level digital equipment. In May 1999, George Lucas challenged the supremacy of the movie-making medium of film for the first time by including footage filmed with high-definition digital cameras in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. In late 2013, Paramount became the first major studio to distribute movies to theaters in digital format, eliminating 35mm film entirely. Since then the demand of movies to be developed onto digital format rather than 35mm has increased drastically.

As digital technology improved, movie studios began increasingly shifting towards digital cinematography. Since the 2010s, digital cinematography has become the dominant form of cinematography after largely superseding film cinematography.

Egyptian Cinema History:-

The first screening of a motion picture in Egypt was in Alexandria. The port was of course the first point of entry into the country, but it provided an atmosphere that was more tolerant towards innovations and creativity, so that it was in Alexandria that the Lumière Brothers chose to show their short film The Pyramids (Les Pyramides) on 5 November 1896 in one of the halls of the Toussoun Bourse (the Café Zawani), less than a year after it was first shown to the world in Le Grand Café in Paris. It was immediately cause for much talk and wonder. One of the issues it raised was the vast difference between East and West in such matters. An anonymous writer in El Mou’ayed on 12 November 1986 laments how far behind the East is, but how capable of catching up if people applied themselves:

“When Will We Catch Up With Them?”

I will not go into all those things people wonder about regarding the affairs of foreigners, for endless tomes are needed to explain that. There are all sorts of evidence for us to see and almost touch with our fingers, to admit that we are as far behind them as a tortoise is from a hare. But what has made me use this title is not a futile matter which can be comprehended by anybody who has a heart or heard and was witness. What has happened is that a few days ago some foreigners came to Alexandria with a camera capable of capturing motion pictures, which they call “cinematograph”. They presented it in a spacious hall in the Toussoun Pasha Bourse. An incredible number of people gathered round to watch it, and I among them. I left intoxicated by the wonders I had seen.

This marvelous invention which has aroused such amazement has also made me aware of a multitude of things, the most important of which is that I apprehended the secret of the progress of the foreigners. I found out that we would be no less than them if we had the same material, and if, like them, we related work to science and linked the tangible with the intangible.

Indeed, how could a scholar in their country not progress towards invention and creativity, towards generating wondrous things in his works? At school, he finds all the tools of science readily available to him, present before his eyes to reveal to him the mysteries of knowledge. This he receives, opening to him the closed doors of science and invention. He leaves school with his mind full of all that is necessary for the progress of his country and the race against others to get the happiness and leisure we see the foreigners enjoying. Then, wherever we turn, in the capitals of Europe and its flourishing cities, we see wonderful museums and exhibitions, scientific and political clubs, and industrial and artistic offices and gatherings. If an ignoramus were to visit them once a week, he would become a scientist in a few years.

If we know all this, and also that trade, industry and agriculture are resources in the lands of the foreigners, which make life easier for them and eliminate the fear of hunger and poverty that is so firmly fixed in our country. If we know all this we will no longer hesitate to confess that to compare us Orientals to the West is to compare the dead to the living or earth to sky. All we can do is lament our luck, wail at our destiny, and grieve that our government is in the iron grip of the foreigners. The souls of its people are rising to their throats from harsh pressure and murderous oppression. Then there is no harm in blaming our rich, who have made of their safes a graveyard of piles of money at which termites are gnawing. …

This is all that came to my mind when I saw that wonderful machine I have referred to. I left thinking that as long as we were proceeding down that road, we were heading for an inevitable abyss that has been dug for us by the progress and civilization of the foreigners. If we do not do as our ancestors have done, and shake off the dust of apathy, we will be overwhelmed by their flood. Oh, people, our only salvation lies in following in their footsteps and making the progress of our country our only aim, so that we can catch up with them. I showed in today’s letter, that described the progress of the West, the beauty of the cinematograph (motion pictures).

He little knew that his words would soon come true, and if in 1896 a foreign film was shown in Alexandria, then in a few years Alexandrians would themselves be producing their own films. Yet it was still difficult to determine who exactly those Alexandrians were. In the beginning they were all foreigners — first French then Italians — but eventually there were Egyptians too. Despite the liberal spirit of tolerance that reigned in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the relationship between Egyptians and foreigners could be uneasy at times. Egyptians could not forget that their country was occupied by the British, and that most of the top posts, trade and wealth were in the hands of the foreigners. But in general the feeling among Egyptians was not rejection of this Western form of art and technology, but a proud determination to be as good by creating their own film industry. It was Aziz and Dorés, the famous Alexandrian photographers, who made the first cinematic film in 1907, The Visit of Khedive Abbas Helmi II to the Scientific Institute of the Sidi Abu el Abbas Mosque. This has been documented in Ahmed el Hadari’s Tarikh el cinema fi Misr (Cairo, 1989) under the title “The first local cinematic filming”, thereby avoiding the thorny question of determining whether it was Egyptian or not. But when he came to 1914 he decided to use the subtitle “Egyptian films” when he documented another Aziz and Dorés production: the reception held for the hero Aziz Bey el Masri on his arrival at Alexandria. By 1922 the film Soloman’s Ring was classified as an Egyptian short narrative film, though the director was Léonard Laricci and the photographer was Alvise Orfanelli. With the production of the long narrative film, In the Land of Tutankhamun(1923), the foreign filmmaker grew to be acknowledged as a friend who had done the country a favour. The Italian director, Victor Rossito, was thanked over and over in the papers for having presented Egypt and its people as being noble and beautiful. The cinema magazine El Sowar el Mutaharika published an article (26 July 1923) saying: “We congratulate Monsieur Victor Rossito for the cinematographic reel that he made and on which he spent 2,900 pounds and did not fear failure. … It was an Italian man’s idea to teach peasants by means of the cinema. … His first work is a film with an Egyptian content, using a foreign form.” This is perhaps an apt description of the collaboration between foreigners and Egyptians to produce those early films. Ahmed el Hadari resolves the issue when he emphatically states: “It is an Egyptian film, because it was written, directed and funded by Victor Rossito, one of the foreigners living in Egypt — a well-known lawyer. And if Rossito was of Italian origin, his judgment here is the judgment of all foreigners who worked in the cinema in Egypt. These are Egyptian films to be labelled ‘Made in Egypt’” (p. 72). Alexandrians involved in the various branches of the world of the cinema would encompass all sorts of identities: those born in Alexandria of Egyptian or foreign origins, those who were born in Cairo but came to work in Alexandria when the cinema started there, and those who were born in Alexandria but moved to Cairo with the cinema when it moved there.

One of the special gifts of Alexandrians was that they were polyglot. It was natural for Alexandrians to be fluent at three languages and know a smattering of another two. Italian had succeeded Turkish as the lingua franca, but Italian had been replaced by French. Nevertheless, there was soon a demand in Alexandria that the films be translated into Arabic. By 1912 el Cinema el Misreyah, located in a popular area in Alexandria, had started providing Arabic subtitles on a separate screen. It was an instant success. Still, in the early days the first specialized cinema magazine was Cinégraphe Journale, issued in Alexandria in 1919. It was Francophone, for French remained the language of culture, even if Arabic was soon to be used in the films themselves and in Arabic specialized magazines such as El Sowar el Mutahrika and Ma‘rad el Cinema (which appeared three times in Alexandria: 1924, 1925, 1927). It was also in Alexandria that the film Dr Farahat (1935) directed by Alexandrian Togo Mizrahi was translated into Greek, so that the first Greek films were produced in Alexandria.

Mainly because of the atmosphere that encouraged innovation and enterprise, it was in Alexandria that the industry took root. In the absence of specialization in those early days, many of the principal figures in the field wrote, filmed, directed, produced and sometimes acted in the films. They were cinematographers rather than directors or cameramen. The first cinemas, films, studios, cinema companies, specialized magazines, and critics were in Alexandria. For instance, the first cinema theatre in Egypt was opened on 30 January 1897 — a few months after the projection of the Lumière film — in Mahatet Misr Street (Rue de la Gare du Caire) in Alexandria. It was called Cinématographe Lumière. Soon afterwards, on 9 March 1897, Monsieur Promio was sent by the Lumière Brothers to shoot a number of films in Egypt. The first scenes they shot were in Alexandria, making their film Place des Consuls à Alexandrie the first film ever to be shot in Egypt.

But for films to be made in Egypt, rather than simply shot, a production company had to be established. This did happen when one was founded in Alexandria by Aziz and Cornel in 1917 with several other Italian investors and the assistance of Banco di Roma. This company, SITCIA, also created the first studio in Egypt in Hadra, Alexandria.

From Alexandria, too, came the first cinema critic in the country. The Egyptian, El Sayed Hassan Gomaa, started out as a school teacher in Alexandria, and became editor-in-chief of Ma‘rad el Cinema until it shut down. Then he moved to Cairo where he worked for Dar el Helal, and eventually became editor of El Kawakeb.

Egyptians and foreigners working together in Alexandria created films that reflect the cosmopolitanism and tolerance of this multi-ethnic, multi-denominational city. Different religions are portrayed in Bayoumi’s film Barsoum Looks for Employment (Barsoum yabhas ‘an wazifa) 1923/4, where Beshara Wakim (a Coptic Christian) plays the role of a Muslim, Abdel Hamid Zaki (a Muslim actor) plays the role of the Christian, and a Jew, Victor Cohen, is the banker. In A Kiss in the Desert (Qoublah fî-l-sahrâ’) 1928, the team includes a variety of nationalities, such as Ibrahim and Badr Lama (Chileans of Palestinian origin), Alvise Orfanelli(Italian), and Ibrahim Zoulficar (Egyptian), to name just a few.

Nevertheless, the demands of the market eventually affected the site of the industry. Simply because the population in Cairo was greater, the cinema became more lucrative in the capital. Also, foreign filmmakers realized that for a film to succeed in Egypt, the actor had to be an Egyptian star, someone the population loved and could identify with. As most theatre troupes had moved to Cairo, it was in the capital that actors could be found from among whom the cinema stars would be recruited. And, most importantly, in 1934 Talaat Harb created Studio Misr, which was more sophisticated than anything in Alexandria, thereby attracting all cinematographers to it. So the cinema industry gradually moved to Cairo. Alexandria was left with the glory of having founded the Egyptian cinema — an industry that was soon to conquer not only Egypt but the entire Arab world. In 1936, Studio Misr, emerged as the leading Egyptian equivalent to Hollywood’s major studios, a role the company retained for three decades.

Since then, more than 4,000 films have been produced in Egypt, three quarters of the total Arab production. Egypt is the most productive country in the Middle East in the field of film production, and the one with the most developed media system.

The 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s are generally considered the golden age of Egyptian cinema. In the 1950s, Egypt’s cinema industry was the world’s third largest. As in the West, films responded to the popular imagination, with most falling into predictable genres (happy endings being the norm), and many actors making careers out of playing strongly typed parts. In the words of one critic, “If an Egyptian film intended for popular audiences lacked any of these prerequisites, it constituted a betrayal of the unwritten contract with the spectator, the results of which would manifest themselves in the box office.”

In 1940, the entrepreneur and translator Anis Ebeid established “Anis Ebeid Films”, as the first subtitling company in Egypt and the Middle East, bringing hundreds of American and World movies to Egypt. Later he entered the movie distribution business too.

Political changes in Egypt after the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 initially had little effect on Egyptian film. The Nasser regime sought control over the industry only after turning to socialism in 1961. By 1966, the Egyptian film industry had been nationalized. As with all matters in that period, diametrical opinions can be found about the cinema industry then. In the words of Ahmed Ramzi, a leading man of the era, “it went to the dogs”. The “heavy government hand” that accompanied nationalization of Egyptian film “stifled innovative trends and sapped its dynamism”. However, considering a rather modern moderate review like that given by Dubai International Film Festival, Most of the 44 Egyptian films featuring in the best 100 Arab films of all time were produced during that period. Notable titles included The Night of Counting The Years, Cairo Station and The Postman.

By the 1970s, Egyptian films struck a balance between politics and entertainment. Films such as 1972’s Khalli Balak min Zouzou (Watch out for Zouzou), starring “the Cinderella of Arab cinema”, Suad Husni, sought to balance politics and audience appeal. Zouzou integrated music, dance, and contemporary fashions into a story that balanced campus ferment with family melodrama.

The late 1970s and 1980s saw the Egyptian film industry in decline, with the rise of what came to be called “contractor movies”. Actor Khaled El Sawy has described these as films “where there is no story, no acting and no production quality of any kind… basic formula movies that aimed at making a quick buck.” The number of films produced also declined, from nearly 100 movies a year in the industry’s prime to about a dozen in 1995. This lasted until summer 1997, when “Ismailia Rayeh Gayy” (translation: Ismailia back and forth) shocked the cinema industry, enjoying unparalleled success and large profits for the producers, introducing Mohamed Fouad (a famous singer) and Mohamed Henedi, then a rather unknown actor who later became the number one comedian star. Building on the success of that movie, several comedy films were released in the following years.

Since the 1990s, Egypt’s cinema has gone in separate directions. Smaller art films attract some international attention but sparse attendance at home. Popular films, often broad comedies such as What A Lie!, and the extremely profitable works of comedian Mohamed Saad, battle to hold audiences either drawn to Western films or, increasingly, wary of the perceived immorality of film.

A few productions, such as 2003’s Sahar el Layali (Sleepless Nights), intertwined stories of four bourgeois couples and 2006’s Imarat Yacoubian (The Yacoubian Building) bridge this divide through their combination of high artistic quality and popular appeal.

In 2006, the film Awkat Faragh (Leisure Time) was released. A social commentary on the decline of Egyptian youth, the film was produced on a low budget and had attendant low production values. The film, however, became a success. Its controversial subject matter, namely, the sexual undertones in today’s society, was seen as confirmation that the industry was beginning to take risks.

A major challenge facing Egyptian and international scholars, students and fans of Egyptian film is the lack of resources in terms of published works, preserved and available copies of the films themselves, and development in Egypt of state and private institutions dedicated to the study and preservation of film. The Egyptian National Film Centre (ENFC), which theoretically holds copies of all films made after 1961, is according to one Egyptian film researcher, “far from being a library, houses piles of rusty cans containing positive copies.”

With the entry of Arab capital in the field of cinema with many companies’ investments increased as well as profits, for example, revenue went up from LE115 million in 2004 to LE210 Egyptian in 2005, but it returned to fall to LE100 Million in 2006. The year 2007, however, saw a considerable spike in the number of Egyptian films made. In 1997, the number of Egyptian feature-length films created was 16; 10 years later, that number had risen to 40. Box office records have also risen significantly, as Egyptian films earned around $50 million while American films, by comparison, earned $10 million.

In the field of infrastructure for the industry it has boomed, as there is in Egypt now, for example, 18 cameras for cinema after adding 3 new cameras: 2 for Kamel Abu Ali and one for New Century, which is an important addition to the film industry at a cost of LE15 million. As for the studios there are 44 studios, more than 60 per cent of them in the city of film production, as well as Galaal, Al-Ahram , Nahas, Misr and the Cinema City .

But with increasing of revenues, the production cost of film industry increased, in a time when revenues increased by 28 per cent, also the cost of film production increased 5-fold in recent years , bringing the average film cost eight million pounds , and advertising costs of the film went up to reach ad cost L.E. 700,000 with taxes for 36 per cent .

The reality of the Egyptian cinema became semi- monopolistic with high cost; it allowed vertical monopoly (production — internal and external distribution — propaganda) and monopolising theatres as well.

Perhaps the alliance of Al-Nasr / Mohamed Hassan Ramzi / internal distribution , and Oscar / Wael Abdullah / advertising , and the Al-Masah / Hisham Abdel Khalek / external distribution , of the most important alliances in the field of cinema after the start of the new millennium in Egypt where the alliance has achieved 46 per cent of the Egyptian market revenues in 2005.

There is also an Arab company led by Isaad Younis which has achieved 33 per cent of 2005 revenues, bringing the total revenues of the two companies entering in 2005 to L.E. 139 million, or approximately 80 per cent of the volume of revenues.

In light of this status the individual producer is not present anymore for his inability to provide millions for production, and not to guarantee that he reserve the cinemas for display in the summer and holidays and the mid- year vacation, and not to distribute his film televised as a result of the absence of a star by the prevailed sense today.

Some experts believe that there is no hope for a change in controlling of the Egyptian cinema in the current period and the style of the films produced, but in the absence of the audience to demand that quality of films and companies to search for an alternative style.