Hollywood Babel Jeremy Geltzer

Meet Georges Melies, le magician du cinema.  Melies was the cinema’s first true artist, a stylistic innovator who recognized the potential of the new media. While the Lumieres shot slice of life actualities, trains arriving, workers leaving factories, babies eating, and Edison staged boxing bouts, dramatic dances, and sensational kisses, Melies told fantastic stories. He took viewers to the moon, to the bottom of the ocean. He introduced silly Satans and men with inflatable heads. Audiences had never seen images like his and Melies movies remain quirky, fun, and amazing. 

Continue to discover the first filmmakers in America. This episode features Veriscope, the prodco that released the first feature length film, an epic boxing bout entitled "Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph" (1895). We'll also meet the moviemakers on staff at Edison's Black Maria studio and their main competitor, American Mutoscope and Biograph.

So far we’ve met the giants of early film, the Lumieres, the Brits, and even the Central European cineastes, from German meister Oscar Messter to less famous Russians, Poles, and Austrian filmmakers. This episode takes us to the first flickers of film in America with Thomas Edison's film factory and his lab techs who did the legwork to manufacture the first movies. We'll also meet less familiar pioneers such as Thomas Armat, C. Francis Jenkins, Edward Amet, George K. Spoor, George Kleine, Enoch Rector, Col. Woodville Latham and the Latham brothers. For more info, follow us on Twitter @hollywoodbabel.

When you round up the usual suspects for pioneering filmmakers, there's the US, France, and Britain, but Germany and Central Europe also have a rich history.  Early German filmmakers were drawn to phantasmagoric worlds, Russian directors followed the country's literary tradition, and in Austria, the first pornography factory emerged by 1906. These early filmmakers are unrecognized mavericks--discover an unfamiliar world of forgotten films in this week's episode of Hollywood Babel. For more info, follow us on Twitter @hollywoodbabel.

Meet the unsung film pioneers of British Victorian Cinema, inventor Robert Paul, maverick director William Friese-Greene, Cecil Hepworth, GA Smith, and others. These innovators have been less celebrated than les freres Lumiere or Thomas Edison's film factory, but the UK was a hotbed of activity for early moviemakers. For more info, follow us on Twitter @hollywoodbabel.

Meet the Lumieres, the first inventors to bring motion pictures to the screen. While Thomas Edison had a film factory, the Lumieres were more of a cine-family, with the freres, their father and friends. The Lumieres introduced the world to movies but  were unable to change with the times and were soon eclipsed by more aggressive prodcos. Their story ends in 1902, but for a time, les frères Lumieres had the world on a string. This is their story. For more info, follow us on Twitter @hollywoodbabel.