The Photo-Drama of Creation

The Photo-Drama of Creation, or "Creation-Drama" was a religious film (4 parts, altogether 8 hours) produced under the direction of Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Bible Student movement. Production began as early as 1912, and the Drama was introduced in 1914 by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. It has the distinction of being the first major screenplay which incorporated synchronized sound, moving film, and color slides. A book by the same name was also published in 1914 and contained representative slide images with a page of accompanying text to explain the chronological progression of God's plan from the creation of the earth through to the end of the 1,000 year reign of Christ.

Combination shows of magic lantern slides and movies were common in this period, but the addition of recorded speech was unusual, and the sheer size of the distribution effort and the audience for a single religious production was extraordinary.

The premiere was in January 1914 in New York, in summer 1914 in Germany. In North America, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, over 9,000,000 people had already seen either the full "Photo-Drama" or its abbreviated version called the "Eureka-Drama".

External links

* [http://www.agsconsulting.com/menucn3.htm RealMedia: "The Photo-Drama of Creation"]
* [http://www.pastor-russell.com/ministry/pd.html Pastor Russell´s ministry]
* [http://www.biblestudents.org/absco/photodrama/index.htm Photo-Drama from the Bible Students]
* [http://www.a2z.org/wtarchive/docs/1914_Photo_Drama_of_Creation.pdf Scanned PDF of original book version of Photo Drama of Creation]
* [http://www.photodrama.info/ Full Photodrama available on two DVDs]