1911 in film

Events

• February: The Motion Picture Story Magazine, the first American film fan magazine, is published. It is followed later in the year by Photoplay.
• March 23: D. W. Griffith shows the first major close-up shot on film with the successful release of The Lonedale Operator proving his ever-growing mastery of how to utilise film.
• April 8: Winsor McCay releases his first film Little Nemo, one of the earliest animated films.
• October 23 : Svetozar Botorić's The Life and Deeds of the Immortal Leader Karađorđe premieres in Belgrade and becomes the first feature film made in Serbia and the Balkans.
• October 26: Defence of Sevastopol premieres at the Crimean palace of Tsar Nicholas II and becomes the first feature-length film made in the Russian Empire and one of the first in the world.
• October 27: David Horsley's Nestor Motion Picture Company opens the first motion picture studio in Hollywood.
• November: The Kalem Company of New York pays the estate of author Lew Wallace $25,000 in legal settlement for having adapted Ben Hur from without securing prior rights.

  Films released in 1911

• Aerial Anarchists
• Alkali Ike's Auto, starring Bronco Billy Anderson
• Les Aventures de baron de Munchhausen, directed by Georges Melies
• Baseball and Bloomers
• The Battle, directed by D. W. Griffith
• Brown of Harvard
• The Buddhist Priestess
• Cally's Comet
• The Coffin Ship
• The Colonel and the King
• Courting Across the Court
• The Cowboy and the Lady
• David Copperfield
• Defence of Sevastopol
• The Diabolical Church Window, directed by Georges Melies
• The Dream, directed by Thomas H. Ince, starring Mary Pickford
• Enoch Arden, directed by D. W. Griffith
• The Fall Of Troy, directed by Giovanni Pastrone
• First Indy 500
• Flames and Fortune
• For Her Sake
• His Trust, directed by D. W. Griffith
• His Trust Fulfilled, directed by D. W. Griffith. The sequel to Griffith's earlier 1911 short film "His Trust"
• Her Crowning Glory
• The Inferno , adapted from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. First blockbuster feature film in cinema. First feature-length horror film.
• The Odyssey
• Little Nemo
• The Higher Law
• The Lonedale Operator, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Blanche Sweet
• The Miser's Heart, directed by D. W. Griffith
• Der Müller und sein Kind
• The Pasha's Daughter
• Princess Clementina
• The Railroad Builder
• The Scarlet Letter
• She, starring Marguerite Snow
• The Smuggler
• Sweet Memories
• Swords and Hearts, directed by D. W. Griffith
• A Tale of Two Cities
• That's Happiness
• What Shall We Do with Our Old?
• Winsor McCay And His Animated Pictures
• Won by Wireless

  Births

• January 5 – Jean-Pierre Aumont, actor
• January 7 – Butterfly McQueen, actress
• January 22 – Mary Hayley Bell, actress, writer and dramatist, wife of Sir John Mills
• January 31 – Eddie Byrne, actor
• February 6 – Ronald Reagan, actor, United States President
• February 9 – Gypsy Rose Lee, actress and burlesque dancer
• February 14 – Florence Rice, actress
• February 19 – Merle Oberon, actress
• February 28 – Ishirō Honda, director
• March 3 – Jean Harlow, actress
• March 18 – Smiley Burnette, actor, musician
• April 23 – Ronald Neame, cinematographer, producer and director
• May 11
• *Louise Campbell, actress
• *Phil Silvers, actor
• May 17 – Maureen O'Sullivan, actress
• May 18 – Sigrid Gurie, actress
• May 27 – Vincent Price, actor
• June 3 – Ellen Corby, actress
• June 20 – Gail Patrick
• June 29 – Bernard Hermann, composer
• July 6 – Laverne Andrews, singer, actress, member of Andrews Sisters
• July 14 – Terry-Thomas, actor
• July 16 – Ginger Rogers, actress, dancer
• July 18 – Hume Cronyn, actor
• August 3 – Alex McCrindle, British actor
• August 5 – Robert Taylor, actor
• August 6 – Lucille Ball, actress
• August 7 – Nicholas Ray, director
• August 12 – Cantinflas, actor
• September 2 – Erwin Hillier, cinematographer
• September 10 – Renée Simonot, actress, voice artist, mother of Catherine Deneuve
• October 13 – Ashok Kumar, actor, India
• October 20 – Will Rogers, Jr., actor
• October 27 – Leif Erickson, actor
• November 5
• *Roy Rogers, singer, actor
• *Baby Marie Osborne, child actress
• November 10 – Harry Andrews, actor
• December 8 – Lee J. Cobb, actor
• December 9 – Broderick Crawford, actor
• December 30 – Jeanette Nolan, actress

  Deaths

• January 18 – Arthur Marvin, cinematographer,
• May 29 – W. S. Gilbert, producer of musicals, half of the team of Gilbert and Sullivan,
• July 18 – Genevieve Lantelme, actress,
• August 11 – Verner Clarges, actor,
• October 27 – Francis Boggs, director,
• November 2 – Kyrle Bellew, ,
• December 22 – Wright Lorimer, stage actor, screenwriter,
• Unknown – Woodville Latham, producer and exhibitor whose desire to shoot an entire boxing match on a single reel of film led to the invention of the Latham loop

  Debuts

• Lionel Barrymore – The Battle
• Francis X. Bushman – His Friend's Wife
• Paul Kelly – Jimmie's Job
• Edgar Kennedy – Brown of Harvard
• Ann Little – The Indian Maiden's Lesson
• Harold Lockwood – The White Red Man
• Anna Q. Nilsson – Molly Pitcher
• Anita Stewart – A Tale of Two Cities as Anna Stewart
• Lenore Ulric – The First Man
• Lois Weber – director, actress, A Heroine of '76 ; writer, On the Brink