The birth of a new realism: Photography, painting and the advent of documentary cinema.

MOTION pictures; MASS media; SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY; REALISM; EMPIRICISM

This article discusses the emergence of realistic representation in the early history of motion pictures. The moment at which a science of projected motion emerged and the moment in which this science was perceived to have been integrated into a coherent representation of observed reality should be considered in order to obtain a coherent picture of the role that realism played in the early history of motion pictures. Early films obtain a sense of a conscious self-reflexivity. But the film "Bassin des Tuileries," encodes this self-reflexivity in a form wherein the camera operator intrudes into the diegesis.