From The BBC: Brighton: The birthplace of the first modern film
This is interesting. I saw my first movie around age 6 and I've been a fan ever since.
From article: It's 125 years since many landmarks of early cinema were invented – and a British seaside town was the unlikely setting, writes Norman Miller.
While Hollywood was still an anonymous LA suburb, one British seaside city was busy inventing the "language" of cinema, during a glorious decade from the late years of Queen Victoria's reign into the start of the 20th Century. That place was Brighton and Hove on England's south coast, and its role in helping found cinema as an art form has the colour, invention and striking characters of any big-screen tale.
When, for example, George Albert Smith realised that reversing the direction of the film in the camera could create unexpected visions to dazzle new audiences, he introduced cinema to the wonder of special effects – as in his 1900 film The House That Jack Built, where a toy house destroyed by a boy magically appears to rebuild itself.
Other cinematic landmarks followed by the Victorian British seaside: the first close-up; first editing for narrative; first cutaways and dissolves; first screen kiss; first movie chase. Smith also developed the first commercial colour film system between 1903 and 1908. Living up to its louche reputation, the city could even have produced the first "blue movie" – the 1897 Woman Undressing is sometimes credited to Arthur Albert "Esmé" Collings, marketed as only suitable for viewing in "gentleman's smoking rooms".
more text and photos at link:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210514-brighton-the-birthplace-of-the-first-modern-film
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