Review of The First Film (2015) by Jan V — 06 Jul 2016

In short: Fascinating research about the invention of film making, different from common knowledge.

Saw this at the Ghent film festival 2015. It shows interesting research and it is certainly thought provoking. Nevertheless, we know of more examples where several inventors claim to be the real and only one, e.g. printing claimed by Gutenberg (Germany) as well as Coster (Netherlands) and Martens (Belgium). Moreover, when does an inventor believe that his product is perfect enough to show the public? Trying to be too perfect may let him miss the chance to be the first, even when his model proves to be the better one after all. Also, we know that some inventions were frowned upon by authorities and hence suppressed, or became the victim of saboteurs. All such considerations count. A fact of life is that most inventions are just a child of their time, hence it is no miracle that some seem to go public nearly simultaneously.

Anyway, just as the filmmaker (present before and after the screening) stated: This is a hard sell. Just to stand up against "everyone knows (...)", and the feeling that history lessons, the library and WikiPedia cannot all be wrong. So why bother. His film is a mixed collection of evidence, some convincing some just circumstantial, all of that adding up to his conviction. It is interesting to watch, while pondering by myself which other well-known inventions are wrongly attributed. Regretfully, I cannot imagine that some film distributor considers the matter worthwhile enough for a world wide release, yet the way the evidence is presented and the film maker's enthusiasm deserves more attention than I expect it to receive.