List of years in film


This page indexes the individual year in film pages. Each year is annotated with its significant events.
  • [|1820s–1890s]
  • [|1900s], [|1910s], [|1920s], [|1930s], [|1940s]
  • [|1950s], [|1960s], [|1970s], [|1980s], [|1990s],
  • [|2000s], [|2010s], [|2020s]

1826–1899

1826View from the Window at Le Gras, Nicéphore Niépce takes the oldest known extant photograph.1833 – Since 1833 onwards, 'animated films' or rather animated effects began to be made with the use of choreutoscopes, phénakisticopes, zoetropes, and praxinoscopes.1865Revolving, self-portrait by French photographer Nadar. Around 1865 he produced this series of self-portraits consisting of 12 frames showing different angles of him sitting still in a chair. Except for a smile in 1 frame, not even a fold in his jacket or a single hair seems to change between the different angles. The portrait could be regarded as a predecessor to the chronophotography which Marey and Muybridge started to experiment with more than 10 years later. As the sequence revolves around space rather than time it is even more related to the bullet-time effect popularized by The Matrix about 135 years later. There is no clue if more than one camera was used in the shoot, but it is certainly well-executed.1874Passage de Vénus, first precedent of a film; On December 9, 1874, French astronomer Pierre Janssen and Brazilian engineer Francisco Antônio de Almeida using Janssen's 'photographic revolver' photograph the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun. They were purportedly taken in Japan. It is the oldest film on IMDb.
Before Muybridge's 1878 work, photo sequences were not recorded in real-time because light-sensitive emulsions needed a long exposure time. The sequences were basically made as time-lapse recordings. It is possible that people at the time actually viewed such photographs come to life with a phénakisticope or zoetrope.1878

1900–1909

1910–1919

1920–1929

1930–1939

1940–1949

1950–1959

1960–1969

1970–1979

1980–1989

1990-1999

2000–2009

2010–2019

2020–present