Evidence type is more useful here than a fake numerical certainty.
Interactive cinema genealogy · 1895–present · curated research atlas
The Genealogy
of Film
Move through cinema history as a field of transmissions: filmmakers, movements, techniques and production conditions. This is a curated genealogy, not a ranking and not a claim that cinema descends from one line.
Method
What the lines mean
The map separates three kinds of evidence. “Acknowledged” edges use direct testimony, explicit adaptation or clearly documented borrowing. “Lineage” edges represent well-established historical or formal transmission. “Context” edges represent industrial or technological conditions that changed what filmmakers could practically do.
Realism, studio classicism, modernism, genre traditions, national cinemas and production movements overlap for decades.
Claims that are only suggestive remain research questions instead of being promoted to lines.
Selected sources
Evidence behind the promoted edges
David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Film History: An Introduction, 4th ed.
Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today” (1944).