Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1896

The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière created the first publicly shown movies, the first documentaries and, with this one-shot, 50-sec. film shot at a Provence railway station, the first horror picture. It is said that as the Paris spectators watched the train chug toward the screen, they believed it was about to crash out of the frame and into the auditorium, and ran out screaming. True or not, the story indicates the power the medium would wield over its audience. The film can be seen on YouTube.