A Sea Cave Near Lisbon is an 1896

1896 in film

-Events:* January - In the United States, the Vitascope film projector is designed by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Armat begins working with Thomas Edison to manufacture it....

 British short

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

  silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 actuality film

Actuality film

The actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that like the documentary film uses footage of real events, places, and things, yet unlike the documentary is not structured into a larger argument, picture of the phenomenon or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the...

, directed by Henry Short, featuring a view looking out to sea through the Bocca d'Inferno cave near Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, with waves breaking in. The film, "is indeed a very impressive achievement," according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "with the mouth of the cave acting as a frame for the central action," "this was one of the first instances in early cinema of a creative approach towards framing a shot," and, "was singled out for its pictorial qualities,"