As the New Hollywood gained steam in the late 70s and early 80s, another revenue stream opened its doors: home video. From Betamax to Laserdisc to Bluray to streaming services, home video revolutionized how we ingest movies. In this...

So you've made a movie. Congrats! But now you have to get people to see it. How you market your movie depends a lot on what your movie is. Is it a massive blockbuster? That means one set of requirements. Is it a small, Indy film? That's...

Well, they're not really "magic." Maybe "illusion" is a better way to say it. As we begin this journey of the history of cinema, we need to understand how movies trick our brains into even understanding that a movie is a movie. In this...

The world is a big place and cinema isn't limited to just the U.S. and Europe. There are a lot of vibrant and influential film movements and cultures from all over the world. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to...

Hollywood was riding high until their formula got to be stale. In places like Italy and France (as well as other places in the world we'll talk about soon) filmmakers were starting to break out of the mold and make daring films that...

The Silent Era of Hollywood set a lot of things into motion in terms of how movies were made and sold. Big stars were one of the main ways studios tried to make their movies stand apart from one another and get the public to make choices...

Russia went and had a revolution in 1917 and cinema was a big part of its aftermath. Even though film stock was hard to come by, we saw the first film school started, and the study of film became hugely important. Russian filmmakers...

It's Craig's last episode of Film and in it he's going to talk about weird stuff... and real stuff. Experimental and Documentary films could each take up their own Crash Course series. The different styles and intents of different...

Who takes the pictures in a movie? Who is responsible for making a movie look good, or creating meaning with light and shadow, or make an action scene clear and thrilling? A lot of the time, that's the job of the cinematographer. In this...

Movies didn't always look like they do now. There was a period (kind of a problematic one) where movies transitioned from short novelties to big, epic, feature films. That's our focus this week as Craig talks to us about the birth of the...

We've spent a lot of time focusing on France and the U.S. as that's where a significant amount of both infrastructure and business models were initially set up for film. But there were other countries adding their own stories to the...

Before the Hayes Code was enacted, movies were a lot more brazen than we sometimes tend to think. Director/Producer Lois Weber spent much of her career making movies that challenged audiences. Her film, "Where Are My Children" is no...

Beginning April 13th, join Craig Benzine (the internet's WheezyWaiter) for 16 weeks of Film History right here on Crash Course. He'll look at the history of one of our most powerful mediums. Film has the ability to communicate with...

Nothing changed movies like the arrival of synchronous sound. NOTHING! Acting, directing, cinematography, and presentation all had to be rethought. Some studios were more quick to take on the challenge while others waited until the last...

It's time for the glitz and the glamour of big motion pictures that helped keep American spirits up during and after the Great Depression. Sound was a huge change to motion pictures, but there were still a few technological innovations...

After the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison got the ball rolling with Vaudeville acts and Actualites, the time was coming for movie magic and fiction to make an appearance. The time was coming of filmmakers like Georges Melies and Alice...

In this episode of Crash Course Film History, we talk about the development of the language of films by filmmakers like Edwin S. Porter and his films; Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.

As cinema started to take off, things like "single viewer" devices weren't going to cut it as the medium advanced. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about the Lumiere brothers, their invention of the...

Alice in Wonderland is a 1903 British silent fantasy film directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow. Only one copy of the original film is known to exist. The British Film Institute (BFI) partially restored the movie and its original...

The Great Train Robbery is one of the earliest narrative films created in the United States. It is also considered to be one of the most significant as it introduced new cinematic techniques such as cross cutting, double exposure,...

An early cinematic depiction of the 1785 fictional tale of Baron Munchausen's Dream, also known as Les Hallucinations du baron de Münchausen, or Les Aventures de baron de Munchhausen. The original story was written by the English author...

In this episode, we explore the legacy of the monumental 1933 film, King Kong, its groundbreaking special effects, and the complex racial and colonial undertones that continue to shape our understanding of this timeless classic.

Since his 1933 movie debut, King Kong’s impact on our culture has been persistent. For nearly a century, Kong’s story has changed to reflect, and sometimes comment on, our society’s issues with racism, sexism, and fear of the unknown....

Learn about Bruce Lee, the famous Chinese actor and athlete who amazed audiences across the world with his action-packed films and superhuman martial art abilities.