In 1879, French inventor Emile Reynaud created a device that used mirror reflections to animate a sequence of drawings into moving images. The Praxinoscope Theatre — predating the Lumière brothers' Cinematograph by 16 years — was the moment humanity's ancient dream of moving images was finally realized through technology.
Over the following 140 years, cinema technology evolved continuously from magic lanterns to digital projection. This collection recreates that entire journey through over 600 physical artifacts.
While Korea has museums dedicated to cinema, there is no institution that presents the history of the machines and technology that made cinema possible.
Existing museums focus on narrative history or interactive experiences. This collection fills that gap by presenting the technological evolution itself — the projectors, cameras, and optical devices that brought moving images to life.
The Praxinoscope Theatre and Zoetrope are extremely rare devices with limited institutional holdings worldwide. With artifacts from over 150 manufacturers across 16 countries, this collection allows physical tracing of how the cinema equipment industry spread from Germany to France, Switzerland, Austria, the United States, and Japan.
The 1942 'Maeum-ui Haengno' (Path of the Heart) film poster is an exceptionally rare printed artifact from the Japanese colonial period. Together with 44 other Korean film posters (1942–2014), it documents the visual history of Korea's film industry.