by Francis Friel

1895 was the year the Lumieres had their first public screenings of their short films. This is basically the Beginning of the Movies.

Alright, so the Lumiere brothers…These dudes were viewed as a couple of evil geniuses in their day. With the invention of the Cinematographe and the innovation of perforating their film to run more smoothly through the machine (a combination camera/projector), they revolutionized cinema as we know it. But they weren’t interested in sharing their inventions with other filmmakers of the time, so people also viewed them as a couple of brilliant assholes.

They also thought cinema was a passing fad and didn’t want to contribute to the perpetuation of something as trivial as their incredible invention that we still use today.

The first film they shot was of workers leaving their factory at the end of the day and runs 46 seconds.

It is as boring as it sounds.

It is boring as hell.

And the fact that these two dopes wouldn’t let Georges Méliès near their precious machines only inspired him to get even more inventive than he already was. So if they contributed nothing else to film history (but, c'mon, they did) other than pushing that guy into the realms of psychotic genius that he eventually reached with his films, they’ve done their job and earned their place.