Of all circus acts, juggling seems best suited to loop animation. In “The Juggler” (1878), Émile Reynaud enhanced the routine by adding to the juggled knives a multicoloured rotating plate, supported on a pole balanced on the performer’s face.... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-jug...

Among Émile Reynaud’s first series of animated strips, "The Roaster" (1878) appears as one of the most accomplished works of the cycle. The human movements are mainly limited to the cook bending and pouring the roasting mixture over the rotati... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-roa...

“The rosette is magic… a star folding onto itself.” In 1878, Émile Reynaud transformed animation into abstraction with "The Magic Rosette", where science, colour, and divine geometry collide. 👉 Discover why it still matters: www.essential-films.co.uk/post/the-div...

1878 was a landmark year in the history of cinema. Muybridge in the USA and Reynaud in France both laid the foundations of the art of moving pictures. Discover the best works from this pivotal year in the Essential Films canon! 👉 View the full list here www.essential-films.co.uk/film?year=1878

Water ripples calmly around a figure partly submerged in water, performing the breaststroke. In “The Lady Swimmer” (1878), Émile Reynaud continued his experiments with colour layering to fascinate the viewer with the beauty of animation. The r... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-lad...

Sports have long provided a visual spectacle, so it is unsurprising that early motion picture experiments found them an intriguing subject matter. Given the constraints of his invention, Émile Reynaud tended to opt for minimalist reproductions... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/battled...

Games come in and out of fashion. We learn of those that have perished through archaeological remains, whether written or painted. "The Game of Graces" (1878) is a rare animation contemporary with the heyday of the eponymous game, both now rel... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-gam...

Émile Reynaud managed to reproduce unfiltered joy in his strip “The Swing” (1878). The two children are not merely subjects in an animated experiment; they come alive with each movement of the rudimentary apparatus. Their faces burst with laug... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-swi...

"The Soap-bubbles" (1878) is a study in blue. Émile Reynaud used varying shades of the same colour to differentiate between the dress of the young woman, the azure skyline and the transparent soap bubbles. The resulting visual harmony produces... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-soa...

Discover the best films by exploring the Essential Films Canon. Follow us and stay updated as we progress through the history of cinema. 👉 View the full list here www.essential-films.co.uk/film

With "The Lady Charmer" (1878), Émile Reynaud pre-empted Étienne-Jules Marey’s more celebrated chronophotographic gun studies of the 1880s, later collected in Marey’s anthology "The Flight of Birds" (1890). Avian flight proved capable of deliv... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-lad...

A man is smoking his pipe whilst his dog seeks his attention. In “The Smoker” (1878), the movement is limited to the floating smoke and the animal’s barking and wagging its tail. This is another of Émile Reynaud’s animations in which ordinary ... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-smo...

Émile Reynaud’s Praxinoscope strips are not only experiments in animation but also historical artefacts that showcase forms of popular entertainment from one and a half centuries ago. “The Trapeze” (1878) may appear antiquated in its subject m... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-tra...

An artist working at a high rate will inevitably produce works that do not match their full potential. “The Baby’s Breakfast” (1878) is one such case within Émile Reynaud’s oeuvre. The baby’s depiction mildly echoes the painting style of the B... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-bab...

In “The Butterflies” (1878), Émile Reynaud breathed vivacity into a scene that his contemporaries would have chosen to give a still-life treatment. The insects play a colourful dance around a vibrating flower, thereby celebrating the wonder of... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-but...

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge's "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" captured "what the human eye could not," changing visual history. Discover how this groundbreaking work bridged art and science, laying the foundation for cinema. 👉 Click to read the full essay www.essential-films.co.uk/post/between...

Nearly 150 years ago, cinematic output produced many curious experiments in moving images. Discover the best of them in the Essential Films canon. 👉 View the full list here www.essential-films.co.uk/film?century...

"The Aquarium" (1878) is the first title in Émile Reynaud’s first series of praxinoscope strips and may therefore claim the distinction of being the earliest animation exhibited that was purpose-built for motion display. Reynaud’s decision to ... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-aqu...

Since the emergence of the internet, videos featuring cats have become synonymous with viral culture. If we attempt to trace their earliest appearance in the history of film, a case can be made for Émile Reynaud’s proto-animation strip "The Tw... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-two...

The sensation of infinite motion created by Émile Reynaud’s praxinoscope is best exemplified in "The Skipping-Rope" (1878), a work ultimately designed to promote an invention that dared to make static pictures move at lifelike speed. This rudi... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-ski...

Sound emerged as a key technical concern for motion-picture pioneers, largely because it was regarded as a necessary component in reproducing reality. For animators, however, sound functioned primarily as an enhancer of a work’s artistic or en... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/dzing-b...

“The Tight-rope Dance” (1878) is a delicate work, reminding us that Émile Reynaud’s animation experiments are a genuine delight. Included in his first series of strips, it features a young female acrobat, dressed in a pink costume, dancing gra... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-tig...

Discover key works of cinematic archaeology in the Essential Films Canon. Here are the best 'films' of the 1870s. 👉 View the full list here www.essential-films.co.uk/film?decade=...

In its day, the moving images in Émile Reynaud’s “The Magic Rosette” (1878) must have felt more exciting than some current developments in AI technology. Groundbreaking in both form and content, this is one of the few pre-cinematic works of ar... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-mag...

Eadweard Muybridge’s “Sallie Gardner at a Gallop” (1878) invites repeated viewing, much as the zoopraxiscope intended. A seminal work in the history of cinema, this early example of chronophotography demonstrated that moving images were not me... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/sallie-...

Émile Reynaud’s animated work predates the successes of moving photography. His drawings were brought to life through the praxinoscope. One of these works from his second series of strips is “The Musician Monkey” (1878). Charming yet simultane... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-mus...

The history of animation lies at the heart of cinematic archaeology, and the French inventor Émile Reynaud was a key figure during its experimental years. His invention of the Praxinoscope allowed viewers to perceive moving action generated by... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/the-lea...

Jules Janssen allowed the world to gaze at stellar objects for the first time on film in "Passage of Venus" (1874). He gave hope that one day images in motion could become part of our quest to understand the world we inhabit. This series of ph... Continue at www.essential-films.co.uk/film/passage...