Feature film

A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature) is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and often a newsreel. Matinee programs, especially in the US and Canada, in general, also included cartoons, at least one weekly serial and, typically, a second feature-length film on weekends. The first narrative feature film was the 60-minute The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906, Australia). Other early feature films include Les Misérables (1909, U.S.), L'Inferno, Defence of Sevastopol (1911), Oliver Twist (American version), Oliver Twist (British version), Richard III, From the Manger to the Cross, Cleopatra (1912), Quo Vadis? (1913), Cabiria (1914) and The Birth of a Nation (1915). The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that a feature's running time is 60 minutes or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than , which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films. The term feature film came into use to refer to the main film presented in a cinema and the one which was promoted or advertised. The term was used to distinguish the longer film from the short films (referred to as shorts) typically presented before the main film, such as newsreels, serials, animated cartoons, live-action comedies and documentaries. There was no sudden increase in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length; the "featured" film on a film program in the early 1910s gradually expanded from two to three to four reels.