Cinema has come a long way since the first moving images astonished audiences in the late 19th century. Today’s global film industry, worth billions and watched by billions, grew from humble experiments with cameras, projection, and storytelling. Along the way, innovations such as sound, color, widescreen formats, and digital technology transformed the medium again and again.
Click on to explore the key milestones that shaped film history, tracing cinema’s evolution from early inventions to the streaming-dominated era of the 2020s.