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1915

– Humberto Cairo, Eduardo Martinez de la Pera and Ernesto Gunche make Nobleza Gaucha, the country’s first feature-length film. The 20,000 pesos budget film earns 600,000 pesos in six months. [MORE]

Austria

– Vienna has 150 permanent cinemas in 1915. [MORE] [ADD]

Azerbaijan

– The Pirone brothers from Belgium open a film production lab in Baku. [MORE] [ADD]

Bulgaria 

Vassil Gendov makes Balgaran e Galant, the country’s first feature film.   It is a remake of his 1910 short of the same name. [MORE] [ADD]

Czechoslovakia 

– Vaclav Havel takes over Antonin Pech’s Kinofa assets and forms the Lucerna company. [MORE] [ADD]

Dominican Republic

– Rafael Colorado, shoots the first moving pictures in the Dominican Republic, Excursión de José de Diego a Santo Domingo. [MORE] [ADD]

France 

Abel Gance undertakes to film Un Drame au chateau d’Acre in five days on a budget of 5,000 francs. [MORE] [ADD]

Scenes of desolation created by the enemy are banned by the Prefect of Police. [MORE] [ADD]

The Union of Cinematograph Directors organise a private screening of banned films at the Palais des Fetes in Paris in protest at censorship. [MORE] [ADD]

Charles Pathe returns from a trip to America where he opened 22 distribution agencies in the same number of states, making Pathe American the leading exporter of American films to France.  [MORE] [ADD]

Abel Gance signs with Films d’Arte to write and direct nine films a year. [MORE] [ADD]

Louis Feuillade is discharged from active service due to heart problems and returns to directing.   [MORE] [ADD]

Vincent Denizot and Luigi Romano Borgnetto’s Maciste, inspired by Giovanni Pastone’s Cabiria, is released.   In the film, a young girl hides from her pursuers in a cinema showing Pastrone’s epic, and enlists the aid of the film’s strongman, Maciste, to rescue her. [MORE] [ADD]

In Montreuil, Gaston Melies converts part of his old film studio into a cinema to aid the local hospital. [MORE] [ADD]

The Gaumont Palace in Paris and the Majestic Cinema in Lyon re-open after being closed at the outbreak of the war. [MORE] [ADD]

Production begins to pick up after the outbreak of war. [MORE] [ADD]

Gaumont release the first two episodes of Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires.   The episodes are entitled La tete coupee (The Severed Head) and La Bague qui tue (The Ring That Kills). [MORE] [ADD]

The Chamber of Deputies vote to form a committee which will encourage the making of educational films. [MORE] [ADD]

Germany 

Ernst Lubitsch directs his debut film, On the Slippery Slope. [MORE] [ADD]

– Erich Pommer and Fritz Holz found the Decla production company. [MORE] [ADD]

Great Britain

In the case of Ellis vs North Metropolitan Theatres Ltd, the Divisional Court of Appeal rules that local authorities have no right to ban the screening of films on a Sunday. [MORE] [ADD]

– As output falls to a total of 5,390 features, shorts, series and newsreels, 600 British films are offered on exclusive terms. [MORE] [ADD]

- The Kinematograph Renter’s Society is formed to safeguard the interests of film distributors. [MORE] [ADD]

– An enlarged Lime Grove Studios is opened at Shepherd’s Bush on the site at which R. C. & A. C. Bromhead had operated since the start of the century. [MORE] [ADD]

– An Alexandra Palace film studio is destroyed by fire. [MORE] [ADD]

– Import duty is imposed on cinema film by McKenna Duties, which classify film as a luxury import.  [MORE] [ADD]

India 

– Shree Nath Patankar makes Death of Narayanrao Peshwa, India’s first historical film drama. [MORE] [ADD]

Italy 

Nelli the Gigolette, the first of a series of films based on the detective Za la Mort, premieres in Rome.   Emilio Ghione produces the film, which stars Francesca Bertini. [MORE] [ADD]

– Luigi Pirandello writes Shoot! The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator, believed to be the first novel set in the movie industry. [MORE] [ADD]

Japan

– M. Kashii Films acquires Pathe’s Japanese interests. [MORE] [ADD]

Mexico

– Italian actress Pina Menichelli, the first diva of Mexican cinema, stars in Il fuoco. [MORE] [ADD]

Poland 

– Pola Negri makes Bestia and Zona for director Aleksander Hertz. [MORE] [ADD]

Spain

– Patria films is founded by Julio Rousset. [MORE] [ADD]

– The Mutua de Defensa Cinematográfica Española is established. [MORE] [ADD]

Sweden

– The Swedish Cinema Owners Association is formed to protect the interests of exhibitors. [MORE] [ADD]

Switzerland

The first national cinema association is founded in Zurich. [MORE] [ADD]

– Robert Rosenthal founds Eos Film in Basle. [MORE] [ADD]

Trinidad & Tobago

– Two new cinemas, the New City Cinema in Port of Spain, and the Palace Cinema in San Fernando, open. [MORE] [ADD]

USA 

His New Job, Charlie Chaplin’s first film for Essanay undergoes a heavy publicity campaign. [MORE] [ADD]

William Fox’s A Fool There Was is released.   The film’s star is Theodosia Goodman in the guise of Theda Bara.   Goodman is given a completely new past by Fox’s publicity department, who claim she is the daughter of a French father and Arab mother.   Bara becomes famous overnight after (silently) uttering the immortal line, “Kiss me, you fool.” [MORE] [ADD]

William Fox founds the Fox Film Corporation with Winfield Sheehan. [MORE] [ADD]

On the day that Birth of a Nation premieres, D. W. Griffith and Harry Aitken form the Epoch Producing Corporation.   The entire film is shot with one $300 hand-cranked Pathe camera purchased by cinematographer Billy Bitzer. [MORE] [ADD]

Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is screened at the White House for President Woodrow Wilson.   Wilson’s book, History of the American People is quoted in the film’s intertitles. [MORE] [ADD]

Griffith’s Birth of a Nation goes on general release.   It earns $10 million at the box office, becoming the biggest grossing film in history until 1925. [MORE] [ADD]

In an attempt to avoid the MPPC, Carl Laemmle’s Universal moves to Hollywood and acquire a site which becomes Universal City. [MORE] [ADD]

Chaplin’s film The Tramp is released. [MORE] [ADD]

The State of Massachusetts votes in favour of a censorship board as a direct result of the screening of Birth of a Nation. [MORE] [ADD]

In Boston, black organisations gather 6,000 signatures in a petition asking the Mayor to ban Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. [MORE] [ADD]

Harold Lloyd completes filming of the first of what will be a series of Lonesome Luke comedy shorts for Hal Roach. [MORE] [ADD]

Charlie Chaplin releases Work, his eighth film for Essanay, and continues to assemble a stock company around him.   Edna Purviance plays Chaplin’s female lead, and other actors in Chaplin’s entourage include Ben Turpin, Billy Armstrong and Fred Goodwins. [MORE] [ADD]

Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties make their debut. [MORE] [ADD]

Harry Aitken forms Triangle Pictures with D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett.   It is the first attempt in the US to form a vertically integrated film company controlling production, distribution and exhibition of its output. [MORE] [ADD]

J Stuart Blackton’s The Battle Cry of Peace, a film financed by arms manufacturer Hudson Maxim, is the first propaganda film to promote America’s participation in the war. [MORE] [ADD]

Following a ruling against them by the US Supreme Court in Washington in the Sherman anti-trust law hearings, the demise of Edison’s MPPC is assured.   The Court declares the activities of the MPPC's General Film Company illegal and orders the GFC to be dissolved by federal court order.   Member companies have already been distancing themselves from the ailing organisation for some time. [MORE] [ADD]

Opera diva Geraldine Farrar makes her screen debut in Cecil B. DeMille’s Carmen. [MORE] [ADD]

Douglas Fairbanks’ debut film, The Lamb, is released.   Fairbanks plays a wealthy coward who goes to great lengths to overcome his affliction and impress his fiance (Seena Owens).   Fairbanks subsequently signs for D. W. Griffith’s Triangle organisation for a salary of $2,000 per week. [MORE] [ADD]

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat is released to much acclaim.   He shot the film in tandem with the shooting of The Golden Chance, filming one during the day and the other at night.  The Cheat stars Fannie Ward and Sessue Hayakawa. [MORE] [ADD]

– The Supreme Court rules that motion pictures are items of commerce and thus not subject to free-speech protection as ‘part of the press or as organs of public opinion. [MORE] [ADD]

– The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures changes its name to the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. [MORE] [ADD]

– Four former members of the MPPC form a new joint distribution company.   It is named VLSE after the initials of the member companies names: Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig and Essanay. [MORE] [ADD]

– H. C. Bullis applies for a patent for a method of recording sound and picture on separate films which run in synchronisation on a single film. [MORE] [ADD]

– Herbert T Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock and W Burton Westcott found Technicolour Company.   Their first efforts at creating a colour film employ a two-colour additive process. [MORE] [ADD]

– Richard A. Rowlands and Louis B. Mayer found Metro Pictures. [MORE] [ADD]

– Poet Vachel Lindsay writes “The Art of the Moving Picture,” the first book to treat movies as art.  [MORE] [ADD]

– The Bell & Howell 2709 cine-camera becomes popular with film-makers.   It is the first camera to enable close-up photography without having to move the camera closer to its subject. [MORE] [ADD]

– George and Noble Johnson form the Lincoln Film Corporation, to produce black films in Los Angeles.  [MORE] [ADD]

 Other Films of Note

Ned Med Vaabnene (Forest Holger-Madsen)

France

Ceux de chez nous (Sacha Guitry) [MORE] [ADD]

Les Epaves de l’amour (Albert Capellani) [MORE] [ADD]

La Folie du Dr Tube (Abel Gance) [MORE] [ADD]

Germany

Der Bar von Baskerville (Harry Piel) [MORE] [ADD]

Ihr Unteroffiziere (Alfred Halm) [MORE] [ADD]

The Bottle (Cecil Hepworth) [MORE] [ADD]

Florence Nightingale (Maurice Elvey) [MORE] [ADD]

Jane Shore (Will Barker) [MORE] [ADD]

Sweet Lavender (Cecil Hepworth) [MORE] [ADD]

Ultus series (George Pearson) [MORE] [ADD]

Hungary

Doktor Ur (Mihaly Kertesz) [MORE] [ADD]

Ireland

Fun at Finglas Fair (F. J. McCormick) [MORE] [ADD]

Italy

Assunta Spina (Gustavo Serena & Francesca Bertini) [MORE] [ADD]

Russia

After Death (Evgeni Bauer) [MORE] [ADD]

Children of the Age (Evgeni Bauer) [MORE] [ADD]

Daydreams (Evgeni Bauer) [MORE] [ADD]

Leon Drey (Evgeni Bauer) [MORE] [ADD]

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Vsevelod Emilievich Meyerhold) [MORE] [ADD]

The Strong Man (Vselevod Emilievich Meyerhold) [MORE] [ADD]

War and Peace (Vladimir Gardin) [MORE] [ADD]

Yuri Nagorni (Evgeni Bauer) [MORE] [ADD]

Dvoryanskoye Gnezdo (Vladimir Gardin) [MORE] [ADD]

Natasha Rostova (Pyotr Chardynin) [MORE] [ADD]

USA

Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur) [MORE] [ADD]

The Bank  (Charles Chaplin) [MORE] [ADD]

The Champion (Charles Chaplin) [MORE] [ADD]

The Exploits of Elaine (Louis Gasnier) [MORE] [ADD]

The Pitch o’Chance (Frank Borzage) [MORE] [ADD]

The Warrens of Virginia (Cecil B. DeMille) [MORE] [ADD]