1890 in film

• The first moving pictures were developed on celluloid film by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, in Hyde Park, London in 1889. The process was patented in 1890.
• William K. L. Dickson completes his work for Thomas Edison on the Kinetograph cylinder either in this year or 1889. Monkeyshines No. 1 becomes the first film shot on the system.

• London's Trafalgar Square,[1] directed by William Carr Croft and Wordsworth Donisthorpe.
• Monkeyshines, No. 1 – contradictory sources indicate this was shot either in June 1889 or November 1890, Monkeyshines, No. 2 and Monkeyshines, No. 3, directed by William K. L. Dickson.
• Mosquinha, directed by Étienne-Jules Marey.
• Traffic in King's Road, Chelsea, directed by William Friese-Greene.

• January 10 – Pina Menichelli, Italian actress (died 1984)
• January 30 – Bruno Kastner, German actor (died 1932)
• February 17 - Sol Lesser, American producer (died 1980)
• February 18 – Adolphe Menjou, American actor (died 1963)
• February 24 – Marjorie Main, American actress (died 1974)
• May 23 – Herbert Marshall, British actor (died 1966)
• June 10 – William A. Seiter, American film director (died 1964)
• June 14 – May Allison, American actress (died 1989)
• June 16 – Stan Laurel, British actor (died 1965)
• June 18 – Gideon Wahlberg, Swedish actor, screenwriter and film director (died 1948)
• August 2 – Marin Sais, American actress (died 1971)
• August 27 – Man Ray, American photographer and director (died 1976)
• September 4
  • Gunnar Sommerfeldt, Danish actor and director (died 1947)
  • Naima Wifstrand, Swedish singer, actress, composer and director (died 1968)
• October 1
  • Alice Joyce, American actress (died 1955)
  • Stanley Holloway, British actor (died 1982)
• October 2 – Groucho Marx, American comedian, actor (died 1977)

• c. September 16 – Louis Le Prince, French film pioneer, director of Roundhay Garden Scene (born 1842)
• c. December 21 – Johanne Luise Heiberg, Danish Actress, dies at 78 (born 1812)

Media related to 1890 in film at Wikimedia Commons