Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The Kinetograph is regarded as the first true motion-picture camera. The first recordings of the Kinetograph were not shown on a screen, but in a so-called Kinetoscope, which was a sort of coin-operated entertainment machine. Who invented both these machines and many others?
2. The many creative possibilities of cinema were first realised by a French illusionist. He was born in 1861 and died in 1938 and is known as cinema's first narrative artist. He invented the fade-in, the fade-out, the dissolve and stop-motion photography. In 1897 he had constructed a studio on the grounds of his house, in Paris. Here he produced about 500 short movies until 1913, when he was forced out of business, because the movie industry had caught up with him. His most famous and influential film was "Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)", a fifteen minute adaptation of the well-known Jules Verne novel. What's the name of this magician-cinematographer?
3. Edwin S. Porter was probably the first to realise that the basic unit of film is not a scene, but a shot. He is credited as being the first to develop a concept of continuity editing. In 1903 he made his best-known movie, which may be considered as the first ever Western. The film is 740 feet long, consists of fourteen seperate non-overlapping shots and has a duration of about twelve minutes. The movie ends with a man shooting a pistol into the direction of the camera. What is the name of this movie?
4. One of the greatest and most influential German movies of all time was "Nosferatu", featuring Max Schreck (what an appropriate name!) in the role of the vampire. Who directed this film, based on Stoker's "Dracula"?
5. Who directed "Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin)" in 1925, the masterpiece of Soviet silent cinema?
6. Which Buster Keaton movie (1927), set in the Civil War, mainly focuses on a train (which has the same name as the movie)?
7. After a number of Hollywood scandals the MPPDA was created, a self-regulatory trade-organization headed by Will Hays. The purpose of the MPPDA was to avoid government censorship by imposing a form of self-censure in Hollywood. What does MPPDA stand for?
8. One of the most important genres in the twenties was comedy. Which one of the following actors is NOT known as a comedian, although he starred in a few short comedies in the very beginning of his career?
9. What is the name of the 1936 movie in which Charlie Chaplin plays a factory worker who is fired when he has a nervous breakdown on the assembly line?
10. One of the last silent movies made in France was a surrealistic short movie by Luis Bunuel in collaboration with painter Salavador Dali. The approximately 17 minute long movie provides a seemingly incoherent stream of brutal, erotic images from the subconscious. The film featured some very gruesome scenes: a woman's eyeball being cut in two with a razor, ants crawling from a hole in a man's hand and the rotting carcasses of two donkeys lying on a piano. What is the name of this extraordinary piece of silent cinema, made in 1929?
Source: Author
marienbart
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
rj211 before going online.
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