Ancient Cinema
is an art installation featuring recently discovered Roman Artifacts from Zadar, Croatia, that turn out to be the remains of the world's first motion picture projector.
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Aug.22,2012
ANCIENT CINEMA is a multi-media exhibition by Henry Jesionka that premiered at the Donat in Zadar, Croatia in July 2012. The exhibition features artifacts from a fictional ancient cinema along with... read more...
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Apr.28,2012
Most historians trace the history of cinema to the early 19th century, with the invention of the Phenakistoscope, in 1832, and the Zoetrope, two years later. Henry Jesionka’s “Ancient Cinema”... read more...
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May.11,2012
An unusual Roman bronze artifact, recently purchased at a flea market in Zadar, Croatia, was the first in a series of archaeological findings that lead to the discovery of a Roman “film” projector... read more...
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stories/Apr.22,2012
Paleolithic Cinema
"During the Old Stone Age, between 37,000 and 11,000 years ago, some of the most remarkable art ever conceived was etched or painted on the walls of caves in southern France and northern Spain,” writes Judith Thurman in The New Yorker, in 2008. “After a visit to Lascaux, in the Dordogne, which was... read more
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stories/Apr.29,2012
Zadar: A Roman Colony
Zadar, Croatia, known in antiquity as Iader or Iadera, was an important trading port on the coast of the Adriatic. It became a Roman colony in the first years of the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 BC-14AD). In the mid-first century AD, the poet Marcus Aennaeus Lucanus described Zadar as “extending... read more
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stories/Apr.29,2012
Cinema Desires
Since ancient times, stargazers and astronomers have employed different models to describe the way in which time was harnessed to space, and dreamed about the possibility of seeing the universe in a way that could lately be described as cinematographic. read more
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stories/Apr.22,2012
Discrete Monuments
"It is sometimes said that the aim of the historian is to explain the past by 'finding,' 'identifying,' or 'uncovering' the 'stories' that lie buried in chronicles; and that the difference between a 'history' and 'fiction' resides in the fact that the historian 'finds' his stories, whereas the... read more
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stories/Apr.22,2012
Ancient Technology
In 1900, just off the coast of the small island of Antikythera, a group of sponge divers discovered the wreck of a Roman merchant vessel filled with Greek treasure. Among the bounty was a device with precisely engineered gear wheels—a completely astonishing revelation for ancient Greece. The... read more
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stories/May.17,2012
Ancient Optical Lenses
Henry Jesionka discovered a cache of artifacts from an ancient Roman film projector on a beach in Nin, Croatia, in 2011. Absent from this find was any evidence of optical lenses. read more
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