As part of an ongoing research I have spent some time exploring the history of film and cinema through the looking glass of influential, popular and celebrated films. As a method for mixing a bit of fun with procrastination, I have assembled the evolution of films in an edit running short of 100 minutes showcasing roughly 30 seconds of 221 films. I was curious to see cinema evolve over time and for that I needed to gather a sample large enough to be deemed ‘representative’ and spend enough time on each film to gather a better sense of the styles.

You might have already seen a byproduct of this assembly before, The History of Film in 222 Heartbeats, if not you can check it in the link. The article sheds some light on the selection process of all the films included in both edits, and the short video covers the crazy ride from the Lumière’s, Méliès and Griffith to the likes of Nolan, Cuarón and McQueen in under 5 minutes.

I was not totally in control when selecting these short instants. The segments selected for each film is relative to the position of the film within the edit. Old films show early scenes and we then progress as if the films were running in parallel, year by year, surfing from one film to the next every 30s or so. There are a few spoilers, but nothing too damaging.

I do not expect anyone to sit through the entire film (contact me if you do, you probably need someone to talk to) but I invite you to browse through the selection, jumping from a decade to the next. I could not resist to polish the edits a little bit and share it with you all. A list of all the films, with relative link to IMDb will be posted in the near future. (Figuring out the best way to auto generate all the links, any suggestions?)

I look forward to sharing some reflections on both the selection method and the ‘ride’ in a future post.

Links to the various decades are available in the description at Youtube .