Like many other countries, the first films Italyproduced were documentaries. Unlike today’s, they were only a few seconds long and filmed with a simple camera; the subject matter was the news and celebrities of their time, mostly kings, emperors and popes. An early pioneer was Filoteo Alberini, an ex-cartographer of the Military Geographic Institute of Florence.

The first Italian movie whose title is known is dated 1896 and tells the visit of the King and Queen in Florence. Unfortunately, most of the film has been lost; the fragments we still have traces of today show Pope Leo XIII going to pray in the Vatican gardens and turning to the camera for what is the first papal blessing filmed.