Unprecedented in scope, this 14-month series presents one example of film or video from every year of moving-image history. Spanning the years 1893 (when Edison’s first kinetoscope subject, Blacksmithing Scene, was presented to the public) through 2005, 112 Years of Cinema is nonchronological and embraces all genres of film- and videomaking, including fiction and documentary, narrative and non-narrative, animation, and the avant-garde. Titles are drawn from the extensive collection of the Museum’s Department of Film and Media, with occasional contributions from film studio libraries and International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)-member archives. 112 Years of Cinema provides compelling evidence not only in support of the assertion by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA’s founding director, that motion pictures were the art form of the 20th century, but that they are the art form of the 21st as well.
Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator, and Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media.