Here’s a question I’ve been pondering for quite some time: If everyone is acting like the Lumière brothers, where is the Sergei Eisenstein of broadband video?

Let me explain what I mean:

Four days before the end of 1895, the Lumière brothers held what would come to be known as the first commercial screening of a movie—actually, a series of ten short films approximately 46 seconds each in duration, and more akin to a primitive style of reality television, since the language of film had yet to be invented.

The Lumières, considered to be among the first filmmakers, made film history as such. Much more accurately, however, they were really inventors and early technological pioneers; according to Wikipedia, the brothers were responsible for patenting a number of significant film processes, including the creation of sprocket holes for the advancement of a film strip within the camera and projector.

It’s also clear that the Lumières, pioneering as they were, failed to understand that the technology they had helped invent wasn’t just a mere extension of photography, but a brand new art form. Their contributions were incredibly important, but they thought of the moving picture as more of a novelty and ultimately declared that “the cinema is an invention without any future.”

The Lumières were correct in assuming that the novelty of seeing people projected onto a giant screen clambering in and out of trains (as is the case with one of their most famous shorts, Arrival of a Train at a Station) would soon wear off. But it took a mind like Eisentein’s to understand that the invention—the technology itself—had the potential to become a powerful art form and so much more than just a novel technique for recording human activity.

Born in 1898, Sergei Eisenstein wasn’t even a thought on the day that the Lumière brothers first projected their series of short films for an awestruck French audience. He wasn’t even the first filmmaker to apply editing techniques to film, as Edwin S. Porter, an American director and editor, was already doing that almost two decades before Eisenstein. But he was the first filmmaker and theoretician to clearly articulate that editing is “the nerve of cinema.”

Eisenstein also made film history as an early pioneer of film, but, more importantly, he articulated the power of a new art form that at its crux depended on the techniques of film editing to convey meaning in a way wholly different from the more traditional art forms of the theater and photography.

Keeping this little bit of film history in mind, it’s clear that broadband has enabled video to move to the Internet, and therefore the computer screen. It’s also clear that a significant percentage of the population is consuming video online. But what I see happening right now is that there are a bunch of Lumières, either amateur ones on YouTube or professional ones (like CBS), migrating their wares onto the little screen, simply for further viewing.

What I see happening is that lot of people are using and experiencing video online as merely another distribution avenue for what is an already established craft. Other than being able to watch video on your computer screen via the Web, there is nothing significantly different from the way that video is being produced or thought of that would give it the potential to be a new art form online, capable of expressing itself differently from television. As of now, it seems to me that we sit where the Lumière brothers once sat, scratching our heads and trying to figure out whether this new technology has a future.

So I ask again, where are you, Eisenstein? The Eisenstein that will explore the potential of the new medium and create the language by which it will rise above mere novelty? Do any of you know who it might be? Any examples you can point to out there?