Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Made by J. Stuart Blackton at Vitagraph Studios, this short is widely cited as the first American animated film. Blackton combines stop-motion photography of chalk drawings on a blackboard with cut-out figures and a few hand-drawn frames, making faces appear to morph, smile, and react on their own. The technique is crude by modern standards, but the idea of bringing a drawing to life on screen was new. The film is in the public domain in the United States as a pre-1930 work.