As far as the arts go, film is one of the youngest disciplines around. In contrast to literature, theatre, music, and visual arts, its history can only credibly be said to span under 200 years. But in less than two centuries, the craft and evolution of film has transformed by leaps and bounds.
Some of this exponential growth and progress can be attributed to the rapid change of technology in the same time period, which roughly correlates from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Advances in technology have made going to the movies an increasingly immersive experience. From early attempts to capture human motion via the technology of a Victorian-era children’s toy to the IMAX theaters of today, which can make an audience feel it’s right there—on a sinking ship, for example—the history of film can in part be chartered by how close filmmakers have come to capturing the experience of real life with their cameras and other forms of simulation.
Other advances in film over the course of its short lifespan can be attributed to changing social norms and mores. Whereas once films may have been used to promote an official worldview or simply convey information—consider the trip the King and Queen of England took to India and recorded in the Edwardian era in a two-hour special to be shown back home—films today often take quite a different tack. From “Apocalypse Now,” depicting the horrors of the American engagement in the Vietnam War, to the Oscar-winning “Parasite,” which conveyed the simmering class tensions that exist below the surface of much of modern life, films often exist to explicitly or implicitly critique the power structures of the societies in which they are produced.