martes, 9 de junio de 2009

History of Cinema: Black Maria


The Black Maria (pronounced ma-RYE-uh) was Thomas Edison's movie production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It is widely referred to as "America's First Movie Studio" and was built in 1893 for the purpose of making film strips for the Kinetoscope.

Edison conducted the world's first public demonstration of films shot using the Kinetograph in the Black Maria, with a Kinetoscope viewer. The exhibited film showed three people pretending to be blacksmiths.
The first motion pictures made in the Black Maria were deposited for copyright by Dickson at the Library of Congress in August, 1893. In early January 1894, The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze) was one of the first series of short films made by Dickson for the Kinetoscope in Edison's Black Maria studio with fellow assistant Fred Ott. The short film was made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's Weekly. It was the earliest motion picture to be registered for copyright — composed of an optical record of Ott sneezing comically for the camera.

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