Film & Television
When was the first paid public film screening?
1895 AD
The Lumière brothers screened ten short films in Paris on 28 December 1895 AD.
1 BC · 1 AD
Context
What happened?
About forty paying visitors and invited guests watched in the Salon Indien du Grand Café. The brothers had already shown films privately in March that year, and other inventors, among them the Skladanowsky brothers in Berlin, had projected films to audiences earlier in 1895.
Significance
Why it matters
Cinema had many inventors and precursors, so treating this evening as the birth of film is a convention rather than a fact. The Lumière screening earns its place because it brought projection, a paying public audience and a programme of films together in a form that caught on.
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