1826-1893 - FILM BEFORE FILM

FILM BEFORE FILM is a 1987 documentary about man's attempts to create visual movement with still photographs in the eight decades before the invention of film.  Werner Nekes, director, producer, writer, and collector presents his vast assortment of early film artifacts in this film he directed, and originally narrated in German.

Beginning with the room-sized camera obscura, Nekes reviews early still picture technology, then the use of light and shadow in entertainment.  Finally, he demonstrates attempts to add something more to photos and drawings, such as panoramic pictures the viewer scrolled through, or intricate drawings cut out and constructed in three dimensions.

Out of dozens of gadgets and tricks, Nekes presents the thaumatrope as one of the most simple and important.  Taking advantage of the basic principle behind motion pictures, that the human eye is lazy, the thaumatrope creates one image out of two: drawings on either side of a paper disc are merged in the mind of the viewer as the disc is spun quickly.

Other devices, such as the zoetrope, are shown expanding on this concept.  They come closer to film with longer looped animations on wheels and drums.  The mutoscope, which uses dozens of pictures and the classic flip-book concept, is the closest to film in capturing lifelike movement.

Also featured in the film are invisible ink drawings, and more simple inventions employing optical illusions that man used to add another dimension to still pictures.  Drawings in conjunction with anamorphic lenses demonstrate the concept of squeezing and expanding images that is still used today in film.  Phosphorous-treated renderings of cityscapes that lit up in the dark, painting books that required only water to create perfectly colored pictures, erotic art printed on the bottom of cups that magnified when filled, all are among the dozens of inventions and art presented in FILM BEFORE FILM.