This two seconds of film is thought to be the very first motion picture, using Louis Le Prince's single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film. It features the earliest born (but not the oldest) person ever to be in a film, Sarah Robinson Whitley, who was born in 1816. She was also the first person featured in a motion picture to die, as she did so just ten days after this film was made on October 24, 1888. She was Louis Le Prince's mother-in-law.Then there is the mystery surrounding Louis Le Prince's death/disappearance. He disappeared from a train in 1890, planning to make a trip to the United States to demonstrate his techniques. His body and luggage were never found, and legends surrounding his disappearance include the theory that Edison had him killed so that he could take credit for inventing the motion picture. A huge court battle ensued in the United States over that title and the right to collect royalties, first won by Edison against the Le Prince family, but then that court decision was overturned.There was actually a book written on the subject of the disappearance of Le Prince and how the pioneers of cinema were involved in all kinds of backstabbing - "The Missing Reel". I recommend it as not the best book ever written, but about the only work in writing on the subject.

It's lasts barely longer than it takes to say the title, but this short black and white film—shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince in 1888 and reputedly the first film ever made—is a highly influential work, one that, even today, resonates in the work of several contemporary film-makers.Hollywood powerhouses Michael Bay and Tony Scott regularly employ Le Prince's 'no shot longer than two seconds' technique in their action sequences, whilst this year's The Artist successfully resurrected Roundhay's silent black and white aesthetic and bagged a clutch of Oscars as a result.Today's movie fans sure owe a lot to Monsieur Le Prince and his tea-party guests.

Just when you think you know something you must think again, see things from a different perspective, another angle. While the Lumière brothers practically invented the film putting their mark on Historical books about cinema, before them there were some experiments made by pioneer Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince in only one year, (four films made in 1888, then the man mysteriously vanished), and he's regarded by some film historians as the real inventor of this art form. What are my thoughts about him? Well, I make the same comparison between the aviation pioneers Santos Dumont and the Wright brothers being Dumont like Lumières and the Wright brothers in the same position as Le Prince: it doesn't matter who came first with the invention but yes the one who showed it to a larger audience first. That was the case with Dumont, and that was the case with Lumières since Le Prince films were only shown to small audiences in factories, never on a theater. However, the two second moving pictures on paper film Le Prince gave us resist until today and those really, really short films are the oldest surviving frames of an era and it is good to know that they're still with us.What happens here? The director films his family for two seconds in a humored situation like having one of the family members strangely walking in circles. They're not characters, they're real and they make something funny. Way before many mockumentaries out there, huh? The problem of watching this is that...it goes so fast! Blink or miss! I'm giving 9 to this for the fact of simply existing in our times and I hope it lasts for many generations and years to come. 9/10

This is probably one of the most influential films of all time.I can only think of one that is equal or more influential,that is "The Horse in Motion." Which was a series of pictures made by a horse galloping over thread which activated multiple cameras.So anyway,"Roundhay Garden Scene"has a very complex,twisted plot that will leave you wanting more.As the man emerges from his home, he looks as though he was guilty of something.It looked as though the two men were urging him to get out as quick as possible,and the women was very troubled, as though she had just lost a loved one because of a gruesome murder...Hopefully this story will continue