Twenty years after the birth of cinema, audiences were already growing familiar with catastrophic, post-apocalyptic imagery. Cinema emerged at the end of the 19th century—specifically in 1896—with the demonstration of the cinematograph, a device capable of projecting moving images. For their debut, the Lumière brothers screened several short films, captivating the audience with movement projected onto a two-dimensional surface. Although there are records of brief recordings dating back months prior to this event, The Arrival of a Train at the Station, one of the shorts shown at the screening and filmed by the Lumière brothers themselves, is widely considered the world's first movie.
While early films featured minimal narrative plots, this quickly changed. By 1916—exactly twenty years after the birth of cinema—Danish filmmaker August Blom directed Verdens Undergang, released in English as The End of the World. The film depicts a global catastrophe triggered by a passing comet, leaving cities and spaces devastated or submerged in water.
