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Cinema and Its Ancestors

Related Article: How Digital Cinema Works

Watch this video about the birth of modern cinema on HowStuffWorks. Film historian Tom Gunning examines an important precursor to modern film: the magic lantern. He considers the eighteenth and nineteenth century's fascination with this new, very modern way of experiencing images and how this form of visual media ushered in the era of motion pictures. Copyright 2005 The University of Chicago

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