A Concise History of the Origins of Cinema

Chris J Mitchell was born at Whipps Cross Hospital, Leytonstone, London and grew up in Chingford in North East London. He spent his early years out cycling in Epping Forest, playing video games and attending his local church’s youth group.

At school, out of all his studies what most captivated him was storytelling and creative writing. This part of his English lessons required no motivation and a short story he wrote about a group of Knights and their quest to destroy a nest of Gargoyles, hidden deep in the mountains, earned him praise and additional credits from his English teacher.

In his childhood, around the age of eight, he met with a serious accident and although making a full recovery from it, the event lead to him developing agoraphobia. He struggled against this during his teenage years, but at around the age of eighteen, he eventually overcame this phobia. This experience left an impression on him for how strongly emotions can affect and alter logical and rational thoughts.
After college and his battles with agoraphobia, he went on to graduate from University in Manchester. Where he studied Film and wrote his dissertation on Vaudeville’s influence on early comedic movies and how great performers such as the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd or Laurel and Hardy brought their craft to the big screen.

Always writing in his spare time, jotting down ideas for stories and researching his upcoming work, Chris has written numerous short stories, of which include a set of six ghost stories in a classic Victorian style. Some of these ghostly tales have been turned into audio stories and all of which have been well received. He also recently completed his first novel The Departure and this book continues the story from one of his short ghost stories, The Return.

His writing has been influenced by writers such as M.R. James, Agatha Christie (of which her books – Then There were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd are amongst his favourites) and Andrzej Sapkowski (who writes The Witcher Series).
Chris also posts non-fiction articles and short stories to Medium of which several posts have been selected by the curators to be included in the ‘recommended to readers’ section for those interested in Books and History across the homepage, app, topic pages, and emails.