The trivia on the IMDb... entry is as good a word as any, I suppose ... says this is not a film. It was shot on a device of LePrince's devising which used sixteen lenses. By triggering then in order, he got an image over a span of time... sort of. The positions of the lenses differed, which meant that the series, when viewed, jumped around.
This tentative groping towards an explanation forces us either to define what a film is narrowly, or to understand the organic process that led to what we call a film now. The former leads us to pettifog over details that are often irrelevant, and the latter provides us with no clear answer to the question of what film is. Do we in the 21st century, who frequently watch "movies" shot on digital cameras, processed in computers and viewed on our computers even watch films?
I prefer to think as film as a recorded moving image which we view, one produced by a process which, in its commercial forms, includes films, movies, television, and other related items. It did not arise suddenly, but evolved out of earlier technologies, which include flip books, magic lanterns, phantasmagorias and such nineteenth century devices as praxizooscopes and kinegraphs.
If you accept that attitude, then the question of whether this is a film becomes irrelevant. It may not be a film by some technical definition, but it an important artifact in the development of that art.
This tentative groping towards an explanation forces us either to define what a film is narrowly, or to understand the organic process that led to what we call a film now. The former leads us to pettifog over details that are often irrelevant, and the latter provides us with no clear answer to the question of what film is. Do we in the 21st century, who frequently watch "movies" shot on digital cameras, processed in computers and viewed on our computers even watch films?
I prefer to think as film as a recorded moving image which we view, one produced by a process which, in its commercial forms, includes films, movies, television, and other related items. It did not arise suddenly, but evolved out of earlier technologies, which include flip books, magic lanterns, phantasmagorias and such nineteenth century devices as praxizooscopes and kinegraphs.
If you accept that attitude, then the question of whether this is a film becomes irrelevant. It may not be a film by some technical definition, but it an important artifact in the development of that art.