ABSTRACT
The first two decades after the debut of Lumière’s cinématographe in 1895 are characterized by a sort of constitutional amnesia. Reviewing references to cinema in the press, the first pamphlets, and technical manuals, the perspective one comes away with is less of a medium without a future, as Louis Lumière famously claimed, and more so an invention without a past. Yet, the motives that had given rise to the history of art also animated early historiographical discourse around filmmaking: legitimating it as an industry, positioning it in a larger system of aesthetics and techniques, detecting patterns and suggesting prospects.
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2023
The Pennsylvania State University
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