The evening of December 28, 1895 was not ordinary for the French capital Paris. On this day, the Lumière Brothers – Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière – presented the world’s first paid film screening for a general audience.

This historic event took place in the ‘Salon Indien du Grand Café’ located in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris. Historians widely consider this date to be the formal beginning of modern cinema.

For the first time the audience got to see something new

In this demonstration, the Lumière Brothers used their revolutionary machine, the Cinematograph, which could do the work of camera, film processor and projector simultaneously. That evening about 33 spectators bought tickets and watched a short film.

The most famous of these was a film showing workers leaving the Lumière factory in Lyon. Which is often counted among the world’s first motion picture exhibitions. Apart from this, the scene of the train arriving at the station and many small scenes related to everyday life were shown, which surprised the audience.

For the first time, cinema became a medium of public entertainment.

This date of 28 December 1895 is clearly mentioned in the famous book on cinema history “The Oxford History of World Cinema”. According to the book, this was the moment when cinema came out of the laboratory and became a medium of public entertainment.

Similarly, George Sadoul’s famous book “History General du Cinema” also highlights this day as the social birth of cinema, where film became a commercial and public experience for the first time.

Why is the date of December 28 considered historical?

Although experiments with moving pictures had already taken place before the Lumière brothers, the demonstration of December 28, 1895 is considered historic because it was held in front of the general public with regular tickets. This is why this date is considered a milestone in film history.

Today, when cinema has reached digital technology, VFX and streaming platforms, that evening of 28 December 1895 still reminds us that the journey of modern cinema began in the basement of a small café, where a few minutes of moving pictures changed the imagination of the entire world forever.