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The following is an overview of the events of 1894 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
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| Years in film |
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| 19th century |
| 1870s |
| Month | Date | Name | Country | Profession | Died | |
| January | 3 | ZaSu Pitts | US | Actress | 1963 | |
| 6 | William Newell | US | Actor | 1967 | ||
| 22 | Matt McHugh | US | Actor | 1971 | ||
| February | 8 | King Vidor | US | Actor, director | 1982 | |
| 14 | Jack Benny | US | Comedian | 1974 | ||
| March | 26 | Will Wright | US | Actor | 1962 | |
| May | 2 | Norma Talmadge | US | Actress | 1957 | |
| 20 | Estelle Taylor | US | Actress | 1958 | ||
| 26 | Paul Lukas | Hungary | Actor | 1971 | ||
| June | 16 | Norman Kerry | US | Actor | 1956 | |
| July | 23 | Arthur Treacher | UK | Actor | 1975 | |
| 25 | Walter Brennan | US | Actor | 1974 | ||
| 27 | Mientje Kling | Netherlands | Actress | 1966 | ||
| 29 | Charles C. Wilson | US | Actor | 1948 | ||
| August | 9 | Kathleen Lockhart | US | Actress | 1978 | |
| 10 | Alan Crosland | US | Director | 1936 | ||
| September | 15 | Jean Renoir | France | Director | 1979 | |
| 26 | Gladys Brockwell | US | Actress | 1929 | ||
| 27 | Olive Tell | US | Actress | 1951 | ||
| October | 7 | Del Lord | Canada | Director | 1970 | |
| 20 | Olive Thomas | US | Actress | 1920 | ||
| 27 | Agda Helin | Sweden | Actress | 1984 | ||
| November | 9 | Mae Marsh | US | Actress | 1968 | |
| 13 | Nita Naldi | US | Actress | 1961 | ||
| December | 8 | Marthe Vinot | France | Actress | 1974 | |
Media related to 1894 in film at Wikimedia Commons
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was a British-American inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.
The following is an overview of the events of 1895 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab in New Jersey also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
The following is an overview of the events of 1891 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
Frederick Paul Ott, skilled machinist, was a key employee of Thomas Edison's laboratories from the 1870s until Edison's death in 1931. His likeness appears in two of the earliest surviving motion pictures – the well-known Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze and the little-seen Fred Ott Holding a Bird – both from 1894.
Fred Ott's Sneeze is an 1894 short, black-and-white silent film shot by William K.L. Dickson and featuring Fred Ott. According to the Library of Congress, it is the second oldest surviving U.S. motion picture to be copyrighted, although it is now in the public domain.
The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It was the world's first film studio.
Major Woodville Latham (1837–1911) was an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and professor of chemistry at West Virginia University. He was significant in the development of early film technology.
Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins' patented Phantoscope, which cast images via film and electric light onto a wall or screen. The Vitascope is a large electrically-powered projector that uses light to cast images. The images being cast are originally taken by a kinetoscope mechanism onto gelatin film. Using an intermittent mechanism, the film negatives produced up to fifty frames per second. The shutter opens and closes to reveal new images. This device can produce up to 3,000 negatives per minute. With the original Phantoscope and before he partnered with Armat, Jenkins displayed the earliest documented projection of a filmed motion picture in June 1894 in Richmond, Indiana.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events, places, and things, a predecessor to documentary film. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as prominent in early cinema as it would become once documentaries became the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality as a film genre is related to still photography.
Herman Casler was an American inventor and co-founder of the partnership called the K.M.C.D. Syndicate, along with W.K-L. Dickson, Elias Koopman, and Henry N "Harry" Marvin, which eventually was incorporated into the American Mutoscope Company in December 1895.
Monkeyshines is a series of experimental short silent films made to test the original cylinder format of the Kinetoscope, and are believed to be the first films shot in the United States.
Carmencita is an 1894 American short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by William K.L. Dickson, the Scottish inventor credited with the invention of the motion picture camera under the employ of Thomas Edison. The film is titled after the dancer who features in it.
The decade of the 1890s in film involved some significant events.
Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph is an 1894 American short black-and-white silent film produced by William K.L. Dickson and starring James J. Corbett. It was only the second boxing match to be filmed, following The Leonard-Cushing Fight which had been filmed by Dickson on June 14, 1894.
History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph is a book written by siblings William Kennedy Dickson and Antonia Dickson about the history of film. The brother Dickson wrote from his experiences working for Thomas Edison at his "Black Maria" studio in West Orange, New Jersey; Edison himself prefaced the book. Emphasis is placed on the eponymous devices: the kinetograph, the kinetoscope, and the kinetophonograph. Dickson helped to develop these devices, which facilitate the capturing and exhibition of motion pictures.
Antonia Isabella Eugénie Dickson was a writer, lecturer, music composer, and concert pianist. With her brother, William Kennedy Dickson, she authored the History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph, considered the first book on the history of film, and a biography of Thomas Edison.
The Leonard–Cushing Fight is an 1894 American short black-and-white silent film produced by William K.L. Dickson, starring Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing. Leonard and Cushing participate in a six-round boxing match under special conditions that allow for it to be filmed and displayed on a Kinetograph. The film was shot on an uncertain date between May 24 and June 14, 1894, in a specially configurated ring in Edison's Black Maria film studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Premiered on August 4, 1894 in Manhattan, the movie is the first sports film ever released. As of 2023, no full print of the film is known to have survived, making it a partially lost film. A 23-second fragment is available at the Library of Congress.