ABSTRACT
The birth of cinema raised a great deal of attention all over the world. Italy was no exception: between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, we encounter several accounts dealing with the new discovery. Interest was first captured by film’s technical aspects. A good example is Edipi’s text, which opens this section:
Do you know what a cinematograph is? The photographic reproduction of the ‘fleeting moment’ through the succession of hundreds of thousands of operations.
You embrace a pretty young woman. Then, 800 instantaneous photographs gather the different gradations of your embrace in an orderly fashion. Then a machine sets the numerous photographs into vertiginous movement. A continuous series of sparks illuminate them. An electric reflector slams them up against a canvas. A magnifying lens brings the very small dimensions of the photograph to almost natural proportions. …And you present a spectacle of the intensity of your affection to the cultured audience. 1
