Via YouTube – This scene is a part of the very first film shot produced by the Manaki Brothers. Despina, the Janaki and Milton Manaki’s grandmother, was recorded weaving in one high-angle shot. For no apparent reason, the first shot made in Macedonia, in the Balkans in fact, made by these two cinematography pioneers, contains peculiar symbolics: at the moment when the Grandmother Despina spins the weaving wheel, film starts rolling in our country.
The movie from 1905 is created in standard technique, without sound, in black and white and 35mm.
Via Monoskop – With it they shot a 60-second film of their 114-year-old grandmother Despina weaving in Avdella, becoming the first motion picture shot in the Balkans.
[NB – Her estimated year of birth is estimated to be 1791 and so it likely she is the person born longest ago historically, to ever appear on film.]
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