Short film history

Here's a very good discussion of short films from their beginning when film itself began up to the proliferation of them at film festivals today.

When films began, reels ran a minute and so did films. When longer silent reels ran ten minutes, so did that era's shorts. When two ten-minute reels were combined in the early talkie era, shorts expanded to ten minutes.

As we plan to explore here later, the short films of the early film era have much to teach us yet about those produced now.

Short Film Essay

http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/gp-pt972.htym