Considering Carolyn Jacobs' research focuses on the cultural history of media, especially in relation to histories of medicine, science, and public health, it makes sense that she examines her five picks through those lenses. From kissing panics to women being barred from performing surgery, the medical view of the discussed films brings new angles to understanding early cinema.

Carolyn is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Communication Department at Central Connecticut State University. Her current book project, Sanitizing Cinema: Public Health and the Regulation of American Film, considers the effects of health emergencies on the development of motion pictures in the early twentieth century.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1900!

Films and resources mentioned:

• Exploding a Whitehead Torpedo (1900) - James H. White
• Grandma's Reading Glass (1900) - George Albert Smith
• The Kiss (1900) - unknown
• The Cabbage Fairy (1900) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Turn-of-the-century Surgery (1900) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Oppenheimer (2023) - Christopher Nolan
• The Cheese Mites (1903) - F. Martin Duncan
• To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (1909) - F. Percy Smith
• The Acrobatic Fly (1910) - F. Percy Smith
• Mad Max (1979) - George Miller
• The Kiss (1896) - William Heise
• Fred Ott's Sneeze (1894) - William K.L. Dickson
• The Horse in Motion (1878) - Eadweard Muybridge
• Something Good/Negro Kiss (1898) - William Selig
• The Cabbage Fairy (1896) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Midwife to the Upper Class (1902) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Falling Leaves (1912) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• La séparacion de Doodica-Radica (1902) - Eugène-Louis Doyen
• "Do You Believe in Fairies? Cabbages, Victorian Memes, and the Birth of Cinema: Seeing Sapphic Sexuality in the Silent Era" - Kiki Loveday