History of Cinema

Cinema can be defined as the art of performed act, intended
to entertain an audience. Most people think of cinema as being
of a very recent origin. In its true entirety, cinema is however,
an ancient entity that has existed with us since 3 millennia at
least. It could have existed prior to beginnings of our organised
societies and settlements at least during the time when humans
were still populating planet earth, but its modern inception can
be thought of as originating during the late 1800s.
Cinema has always been one of the most important mediums
of communicating a theme through visuals and acts. It serves
as the approach of convincing people on a certain topic; and
that is why we have movies and motion pictures on a wide
variety of genres and topics. Cinema has primarily been a
medium of education and entertainment, both served with a
well intended purpose.
Cinema is also an often confused and overlooked subject. Most
people relate cinema only to visuals and the art of motion
picture development. This is however, not fully correct since
cinema itself comprises of several 'forms' of acts like plays,
skits, presentations or simply showcasing a motion entity. In
current times, thousands of cinematic are released every day, in
every language and form available and imaginable. Cinematic
thus do not just relate to developing a motion picture, although
that forms a major part of it.
To understand the true meaning behind cinema, one needs to
go back as early as the 5
th century BC when the Greeks
were one of the first civilised folk to introduce and develop
cinema and distinguish it as a separate form of art. Later on,
the Romans, upon the foundations already laid down by the
Greeks, developed this field further and made it a mainstream
art comprising of plays and presentations that will go on to
encompass almost whole of Europe during the middle ages
when iconic personalities like Shakespeare wrote and executed
some of the finest plays and presentations. Our modern day
cinema is a legacy of thousands of years of accumulation of
development in theatrical arts.