Film historians tell us that at the turn of the last century – roughly between 1898 and 1914 is when churches making movies outnumbered Hollywood. Indeed, in those days the Church was eager to seize on this new art form and use it to share the gospel. In fact, a number of years ago, our team at Cooke Media Group worked with a historic church in New Jersey. The church had been built around 1900, and when they did a recent remodeling project, they broke through the back wall of the church and were shocked to discover a rare 35 millimeter theatrical film projector had been closed up in the space.
Churches Making Movies – Then
After some research, they discovered that about 100 years ago, the church would have Saturday night “movie nights” and encourage people from the community to come and watch movies produced for gospel purposes. We’re finding more and more evidence that was very normal in large churches of the time.
