History of the evolution of cinema in the context of considering the stages of development of science and technology. The first steps to the birth of cinema

  • Liudmyla Vaniuha Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University
  • Mariia Kyreia Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University
  • Natalia Lemishka Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University
  • Olena Spolska Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University
  • Iryna Patron Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University
Keywords: birth of cinema, visual effects, magic lantern, camera obscura, shadow play, historiography

Abstract

Historiographic works on the history of cinema play an important role in preserving knowledge about the development of this art form. They not only document the key stages of the evolution of cinema, but also provide an opportunity to analyze it as a cultural phenomenon that is closely intertwined with the history of mankind. Historiographic works on the history of cinema cover the study of the development of cinema as an art, a means of communication and an industry. They reflect various aspects of its formation: socio-cultural influences, technological breakthroughs, genre transformations and the role of cinema in a historical context. However, a thorough analysis of historiographic sources on the study of the history of the evolution of cinema in the context of considering the stages of the development of science and technology has not been carried out before. The aim of the study is to investigate the state, completeness and reliability of the study of the history of the development of cinema in the context of considering the stages of the development of science and technology, based on the analysis of historiographic sources, the achievements of predecessors, and modern methodology. The objective of this article is to analyze historiographical sources that consider the magic lantern, the camera obscura, and the shadow play as key precursors to cinema. The magic lantern, the camera obscura, and the shadow play were key milestones in the development of cinema, as they developed techniques for manipulating light and shadow, creating the illusion of movement, and projecting images. They became important precursors to cinema, providing the conceptual and technical foundations that allowed cinematic technologies as we know them today to emerge. All three devices actively used the manipulation of light and shadow to create visual effects that became the basis for cinema. Each of these devices allowed for technical innovations in the use of lighting, projections, and images that were later adapted in cinematic technologies such as projectors and motion pictures. All of these technologies helped popularize the idea of using optical effects and media for a mass audience, which was important for the emergence of cinema as an industry. Historiographical works devoted to the magic lantern, the camera obscura, and the shadow play focus on the study of these inventions as important precursors to cinema. They laid the foundations of visual art that uses the play of light and shadow, and influenced the development of technologies for creating the illusion of movement.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Alforova, Z., Marchenko, S., Kot, H., Medvedieva, A., & Moussienko, O. (2021). Impact of digital technologies on the development of modern film production and television. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 13(4), 1-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.72

Alonso, C. (2023). Copla and Flamenco in Spanish Republican cinema: The cantaor Angelillo and the director Luis Buñuel in the film production company Filmófono. In L. López Gómez (Ed.), Popular Music in Spanish Cinema (pp. 26-40). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003194347

Arce, J. (2024). Synchronising voices and shadows: Music and the transition to sound cinema in Spain. In L. Miranda (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook to Spanish Film Music (pp. 13-24). Oxon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003174974-3

Barnouw, E. (1981). The Magician and the Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/magiciancinema0000barn/page/n151/mode/2up

Bazin, A. (1958). Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? Paris: Éditions du Cerf [in French]

Belodubrovskaya, M. (2018). The cine-fist: Eisenstein’s attractions, mirror neurons, and contemporary action cinema. Projections, 12(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2018.120102

Bernabei, M. I. (2018). Un œil nouveau: le Ralenti scientifique à la construction de l'avant-garde. Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 19(31), 93-115. Retrieved from https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/view/16219

Betancourt, M. (2020). The History of Motion Graphics: from Avant-Garde to Industry in the United States. Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press LLC.

Bordwell, D., Thompson, K., & Smith, J. (2010). Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Boudrioua, A., Chergui, M., & Rashed, R. (2020). Arabic Science of Light: The birth of modern optics and of the experimental method. Europhysics News, 51(3), 14-16. https://doi.org/10.1051/epn/2020301

Brown, S., Street, S., & Watkins, L. (Eds.). (2019). British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bulgakowa, O. (2022). The present as a trick or the assault on the spectator's psyche: Circus and the Soviet avant-garde. In A. S. Jürgens, & M. Hildbrand (Eds.), Circus and the Avant-Gardes: History, Imaginary, Innovation (pp. 37-52). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003163749-4

Calvo, Á. (2021). Regulation and business in the origins and development of the mass media: Radio broadcasting in Spain. International Journal of Business Studies and Innovation, 1(2), 123-139. https://doi.org/10.35745/ijbsi2021v01.02.0013

Camuffo, D. (2011). The Camera Obscura and the Vedutas in Venice. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/download/42673445/2011_Canaletto_Camera_Obscura_UK_LR.pdf

Crary, J. (1992). Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT press.

Deaville, J. (2019). Pitched battles: Music and sound in Anglo-American and German newsreels of World War II. Journal of Musicological Research, 38(1), 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2019.1568153

Delluc, L. (1990). Le Silence. In Ecrit cinématographiques III: Drames de Cinéma, Scenarios et Projets de Films (pp. 45–50). Paris: Cinématheque Français Cahiers du Cinéma [in French]

Demchenko, O., Kazmirchuk, N., Zhovnych, O., Stakhova, I., Podorozhnyi, V., & Baranovska, I. (2022). Preparing students for the use of theater activities for children’s development soft skills: European context. Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, 1, 31-46. https://doi.org/10.17770/sie2022vol1.6866

Dienstfrey, E. (2024). Making stereo fit: The history of a disquieting film technology. In: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media (Vol. 6). Oakland, California: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.8543491

Dun, X., Fu, Q., Li, H., Sun, T., Wang, J., & Sun, Q. (2022). Recent progress in computational imaging. Journal of Image and Graphics, 27(6), 1840-1876. https://doi.org/10.11834/jig.220061

El Bouayadi, M. (2023). The origins of Moroccan narrative film: Mohamed Osfour’s films of the early post-colonial period. The Journal of North African Studies, 29(4), 601–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2023.2197220

Elsaesser, T. (2004). The new film history as media archaeology. Cinémas, 14(2-3), 75–117. https://doi.org/10.7202/026005ar

Faust, A., & Németh, V. (2024). György Barcza–Hungarian diplomat in an era of change: György Barcza’s foreign service in Northern Europe between 1916 and 1922. West Bohemian Historical Review, 14(1), 67-88. Retrieved from https://wbhr.cz/images/issues/WBHR_2024_1.pdf

Foucault, M. (1969). L'archéologie du Savoir. Paris: Gallimard. https://doi.org/10.14375/NP.9782070119875 [in French]

Galifret, Y. (2006). Visual persistence and cinema? Comptes rendus biologies, 329(5-6), 369-385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2006.03.008

Gomery, D. (2017). The Hollywood Studio System: A History. London: British Film Institute.

Gunning, T. (2009). Invisible cities, visible cinema: Illuminating shadows in late film noir. Comparative Critical Studies, 6(3), 319-332. https://doi.org/10.3366/E1744185409000810

Gunning, T. (2017). Shadow play and dripping teat: The night of the hunter (1955). In J. Walters, & T. Brown (Eds.), Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory (pp. 5-7). New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing India.

Gutnyk, M., Sklyar, V., Radohuz, S., Volosnikova, N., & Tverytnykova, E. (2021). The formation of computer science centers in Ukraine in the second half of the XXth century. In 2021 IEEE 2nd KhPI Week on Advanced Technology (KhPIWeek) (pp. 639-643). Kharkiv, Ukraine: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/KhPIWeek53812.2021.9570093

Hatchuel, S., & Vienne-Guerrin, N. (2021). From zones to Zoom: Shakespeare on screen in the digital era. Cahiers Élisabéthains, 105(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/01847678211008362

Heard, M. (2006). Phantasmagoria: The Secret History of the Magic Lantern. New York: The Projection Box.

Henkel, B. (2022). Mabuse Returns: Fritz Lang, 1950s Berlin, and the Afterlife of Nazi Television. New German Critique, 49(2), 161-186. https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-9734861

Huhtamo, E. (2013). Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9228.001.0001

Jacobs, L. (1939). The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.188482

Johnson, I. C., & Lim, D. (2022). Curating shadows: Malayan shadow puppets in Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 95(1), 51-88. https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2022.0008

Kracauer, S. (2019). From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lipton, L. (2021). Two-Color Technicolor. In: The Cinema in Flux: The Evolution of Motion Picture Technology from the Magic Lantern to the Digital Era (pp. 423-433). New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0951-4_49

Maftouni, N. (2024). Camera or behind Camera: Ibn al-Haitham vis-à-vis Shaykh Ishraq on Vision. Journal of Philosophical Investigations, 18(48), 309-318.‎ https://doi.org/10.22034/jpiut.2024.59157.3630

Mannoni, L. (1994). Le Grand Art de la Lumière et de L'ombre, Archéologie du Cinema. Paris: Nathan Université [in French]

Matthen, M. (2024). Object perception: four arguments from philosophy. Cognitive Processing, 25(Suppl. 1), 105-111. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-024-01215-y

Matti, F. A. (2022). Photogénie o qué expresa la imagen del cine mudo. Tábano, (21), 64–80. https://doi.org/10.46553/tab.21.2023.p64-80 [in Spanish]

O’Brien, G., & Opie, J. (1999). A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 127–148. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X9900179X

Ponten, F. (2023). Film und Kino als Spiegel. Siegfried Kracauers Filmschriften aus Deutschland und Frankreich by Viola Rühse. German Studies Review, 46(1), 167-169. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0024

Pylypchuk, O., & Strelko, O. (2020). Count A. P. Bobrinsky (1826‒1894), the third minister-reformer of railway management in the Russian Empire. Analele Universităţiidin Craiova. Istorie (Annals of the University of Craiova. History), Year XXV, 1(37), 7‒19. Retrieved from http://www.istoriecraiova.ro/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020_1_ANALE.pdf

Pylypchuk, О. Ya., Strelko, О. H., & Pylypchuk, О. O. (2021). Academician V. I. Vernadsky about the originality of life in Space (To the 100th anniversary of his work “The Beginning and Eternity of Life”). Space Science and Technology, 27(2), 85–92. https://doi.org/10.15407/knit2021.02.085

Reyes, A. (2023). The Art of Cinema. Forma, 3(1), 107-125. Retrieved from https://forma.frb.io/pdfs/Reyes-FORMA-3.1-2023.pdf

Román Vidal, S. (2023). Lights, camera, persuasion!: Sergei Eisenstein, the propagandist filmmaker of the Soviet Union and his ideology (1925-1929). Revista De Historia, 1(30), hc341. https://doi.org/10.29393/RH30-13LCSR10013 [in Spanish]

Ros, R. M., García, B., Moreno, R., Romagnoli, C., & Sebben, V. (2019). NASE workshop: Eclipses with models and camera obscura. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 15(S367), 176–180. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921321000727

Sadoul, G. (1946). Histoire Générale du Cinema. Paris: Denoël [in French]

Santolin, C. B., & Rigo, L. C. (2019). Representations of obesity in cinema: The ‘Fat Bourgeois’ in Eisenstein’s Strike (1925). Movimento, 25, e25076. https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-8918.91815 [in Portuguese]

Schröder, J. (1999). What has consciousness to do with explicit representations and stable activation vectors? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 166–167. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X99431796

Slowik, M. (2024). Defining Cinema: Rouben Mamoulian and Hollywood Film Style, 1929-1957. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197511220.001.0001

Slugan, M., & Terrone, E. (2021). The fiction/nonfiction distinction: documentary studies and analytic aesthetics in conversation. Studies in Documentary Film, 15(2), 107-113. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1923141

Stadel, L. (2014). Lewis Jacobs and American film historiography. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 31(2), 180-193. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2011.646157

Strelko, O., Pylypchuk, O., Berdnychenko, Yu., Hurinchuk, S., Gamaliia, V., & Sorochynska, O. (2019). Historical milestones of electrotechnical equipment creation for active experiments in the near-earth space by ukrainian scientists. In Proceeding’s 2019 IEEE 2nd Ukraine Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, UKRCON 2019, (pp. 1229-1234). Lviv: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/UKRCON.2019.8879983.

Sun, L., Li, J., Wang, Z., Liu, W., Zhang, S., & Wu, J. (2024). Research on the redesign of China’s intangible cultural heritage based on sustainable livelihood - The case of Luanzhou Shadow Play empowering its rural development. Sustainability, 16(11), 4555. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16114555

Thompson, K. M. (2019). The Colour Revolution: Disney, DuPont and Faber Birren. Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 19(32), 39-52. Retrieved from https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/view/16200

Tverytnykova, E., Radohuz, S., & Gutnyk, M. (2020). Research in the field of mathematical modeling of power assets and systems in Ukraine. In 2020 IEEE KhPI Week on Advanced Technology (KhPIWeek) (pp. 314-318). Kharkiv, Ukraine: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/KhPIWeek51551.2020.9250180

Usai, P. C. (1996). Origins and survival. In G. Nowell-Smith, (Ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema (pp. 20-30). New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=337b9626fb7f3b072525a1e70f3bbb999eec736c#page=20

Utterson, A. (2020). Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474440745

Venturi, G. B. (1797). Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Leonardo de Vinci, avec des Fragmens Tirés de ses Manuscrits, Apportés de l'Italie; lu à la Première Classe de l'Institut National des Sciences et Arts. Paris: Duprat. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=0iEOAAAAQAAJ&pg=GBS.PP6&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en [in French]

Vermeir, K. (2005). The magic of the magic lantern (1660–1700): on analogical demonstration and the visualization of the invisible. The British Journal for the History of Science, 38(2), 127-159. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087405006709

Won, J., & Lee, J. (2016). Shadow theatre: discovering human motion from a sequence of silhouettes. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 35(4), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1145/2897824.2925869

Yatskiv, Ya. S. (2022). From the history of space research in Ukraine. 1. The performance of space research as of 1991 year. Space Science and Technology, 28(4), 78–88. https://doi.org/10.15407/knit2022.04.078

Zappe, F. (2020). In the shadow of the “Indeterminate Speech-Act”: The populist politics of rumor in Fritz Lang’s early sound films. European Journal of American Studies, 15(4). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16481


Abstract views: 1583
PDF Downloads: 714
Published
2024-12-15
How to Cite
Vaniuha, L., Kyreia, M., Lemishka, N., Spolska, O., & Patron, I. (2024). History of the evolution of cinema in the context of considering the stages of development of science and technology. The first steps to the birth of cinema. History of Science and Technology, 14(2), 513-538. https://doi.org/10.32703/2415-7422-2024-14-2-513-538