The Black Hole

You're gonna have to excuse my prickishness here, but sometimes gonna have to mention these eventually:

Lumiere's, L'Arrivée du train en gare de La Ciotat. (1896)
Melies', Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1898)
Porter, The Great Train Robbery (1904)
McCay, Little Nemo (1911)
Bacon's, The Singing Fool (1928)

All film as we know it stems ultimately from from these five.

Lumiere gave us the idea of 'realism', Melies of 'fantasy' and Porter the form that would dictate how films are still made today. McCay laid down the basis for stop motion animation that is still used today and Bacon, sound. Besides these five, anyone else appears a bit on the lightweight side, at least in terms of being ahead of their time. The only area that might be seen as marking a real break from these (and even then only partially) is in CGI.

Anyway, not a list to dwell on, just thought it needed to be done, if only see we can get it out of the way and return to the more interesting stuff. Although seriously, Lumiere sort of owns everyone mentioned so far on this thread.

BUMP
nobody mentioned fantasia
B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T

The Photo-Drama of Creation. It was made by Jehovah's Witnesses (known as International Bible Students at the time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pho...ma_of_Creation

Wrong!






Oh yeah, and any film by Ladislav Starevich (stop-motion animaton pioneer)
\http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtjtK...eature=related

seriously, this stuff is awesome