Summary

The article presents the evolution of opinions on this phenomenon that the Lvov intellectual, academic and artistic circles underwent in the period of merely twenty years. In the early period of the cinema development (until 1918) in Lvov, apart from cinema periodicals ("Scena i Ekran" [Stage and the Screen] and "Kino" [Cinema]), daily newspapers, socio-cultural and literary magazines played an important role in popularisation of the cinema/film. They could make the cinema news available to an incomparably greater number of readers than cinema periodicals. They appeared considerably better as far as their content and variety of subjects are concerned. In comparison with pure cinema magazines, the photo service and editorial content were their weaker points.
Nearly all dailies published the repertoire and short reports on more interesting films. In the 1910s theoretical articles about the cinema appeared in the columns of dailies, and they are still present in handbooks dealing with the history of Polish film. It was due to the initiative of the Lvov technical, academic, literary and artistic intelligentsia to develop the cinema culture. Those critical articles anticipated more serious opinions about film in the Cracow and Warsaw press. The role of this medium in educational work for public benefit was noticed in the Lvov dailies quite early including the question of a feature film as the new-born art.