Tamils may not have played any role in inventing camera and film technology, but Tamil cinema was quick to adopt technological advances from the West even in its nascent period. Today, the Tamil film industry is on a par with the advanced film industry in the world — a majority of the theatres screen films through digital projectors, movies are shot with advanced and hi-tech digital cameras and advanced visual effects and other film technology are routinely used in Tamil movies.
Film historian Theodore Bhaskaran notes that even before Swamikannu Vincent screened films in Tiruchi in 1905 and Nataraja Mudaliyar made Tamil cinema’s first film in 1916, a few short films (each lasting 10-12 minutes) were screened at Victoria Public Hall, Chennai, by M. Edwards in 1897, two years after Lumiere Brothers invented and demonstrated ‘moving images’ in France.
