1915

Title Screen Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description

The Birth of a Nation (1915), 187 minutes, D: D. W. Griffith
The first American historical epic film, the story of the lives of a Northern and Southern family during the Civil War and post-Civil War Reconstruction period. A controversial but landmark film, known for its racist attitudes, and also for advancement of the art of film-making, with new techniques of cross-cutting and editing.

Les Vampires (1915, Fr.) (aka The Vampires), 399 minutes, D: Louis Feuillade
In this French silent film serial (with ten chapters) by director/writer Feuillade, subversive vampire thieves sucked the blood out of sleeping bourgeois Parisian society, and stole their jewels. The villainous leader of the vamps was Irma Vep (Musidora), an anagram for VAMPIRE. The partly scripted, partly-improvised episodes (with eye-catching titles like "The Severed Head" and "The Ring That Kills") followed investigative journalist Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé) and his comic sidekick Oscar Mazamette (Marcel Lévesque) in their continued attempts to foil The Vampire Gang's elaborate schemes and gadgets.