When the head of the East German Communist Party announced that day that East Berliners could cross whenever they pleased, happy crowds surged across the border. The Wall was built by the East Germans to keep East Berliners from escaping into West Berlin, separating families and friends. In 1989, Ellis was 69 years old when on November 9th, the Berlin Wall fell. In 1973, he was 53 years old when on August 15th, amidst rising calls for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, Congress imposed an end to the bombing of Cambodia. Armstrong seemed genuinely happy at that moment. The photograph below not linked of America’s first man on the Moon was taken inside the Lunar Module after his walk on the Moon was over. He had been inspired by President Kennedy's inaugural address to apply for admission. Fortunately for all of us, Apollo 11’s Lunar Module Pilot did take one clear (if belated) shot of Neil. Meredith, escorted by federal marshals, registered at the University of Mississippi - becoming the first African-American student admitted to the segregated college. In 1962, Ellis was 42 years old when on October 1st, African-American James H. That year, Schultz said that Charlie was 4 years old, but Charlie aged a bit through the years. In 1950, by the time he was 30 years old, on October 2, Charlie Brown appeared in the first Peanuts comic strip - created by Charles Schultz - and he was the only character in that strip. Although in later years they were thought to be innocent, they were anarchists and were convicted of the crime and put to death. In 1920, in the year that Ellis W Mullinix was born, Italian born factory worker Nicola Sacco and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti were picked up by police on May 5th in connection with the April 15th murder and robbery of a guard and a paymaster at the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in South Braintree, Mass.
Only in chronological order, here are one hundred important films of early cinema (from 1878 to 1919).Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Ellis' lifetime. These are either groundbreaking moments in film that created or changed the medium, or my own personal selections of notable starting points of big names in film history (especially once we reach the 1910’s). Let’s get this started! Below are one hundred films. Since we are starting at the beginning of motion pictures specifically, I am not including specific earlier periods like the use of magic lanterns (that can be a lesson for another day). This list - unlike the others - will include features, shorts, and documentaries all together.
I figured it would be interesting to be able to see the medium transition gradually into feature films, animations, works from around the world, a studio art form (with the birth of Hollywood), and more. I have placed each film (when applicable) as a embedded link in each thumbnail for you to watch, and take part in a wonderful journey through the barest forms of the genesis of cinema as we know it. Here is a chronological list of works from the earliest forms of motion picture until 1919 the last year before 1920 (which would fall in my “Best 100 Films of the 1920’s” list). There’s going to be less scrutiny, and more opportunity to let the films speak for themselves. So, instead, I am going to make the early years of cinema more of an educational timeline.
You see, it gets incredibly strange to actually rank films if we get early enough, for a number of reasons:ġ) You are comparing four hour epics to few minute long shorts (and there aren't enough quality features to just stick with features) if you go with the time period we have (the start of film altogether), you’re then ranking hours long films against two second experiments.Ģ) Enough films at this point are lost, so we would be left with such a shallow pool of material, that it wouldn't really compliment the time periods at all to just subjectively rank the films I can watch.ģ) Far too many early films are problematic in content in a multitude of ways, and it just doesn't feel right or ethical to insinuate that some of these grotesquely hateful works are actually the “best” of anything (even though they might be the best made, it still feels wrong) considering the lack of films I can work with, I would absolutely be forced to rank these kinds of films high enough, and it doesn’t feel right.Ĥ) The start of cinema is full of so many different goals and ambitions, that pitting these works together feels more redundant than ever before. These one hundred films, in case you haven’t noticed, are not deemed the “best” or “top” films of any specific time period. We have reached the earliest years of my decades project, and so I will do something a bit differently.