Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter

Noted film historian Charles Musser (The Emergence of Cinema) co-wrote and directed this definitive tribute to Edwin S. Porter, Thomas Edison's mechanic and cameraman, who is now recognized as America's first important filmmaker and a major contributor to the evolution of film structure. Porter was the first U.S. filmmaker to successfully explore the possibilities of making films with continuous action from shot to shot, instead of single scene films that the showman arranged at the point of exhibition. (Kino Lorber)