All Films

Hunting Big Game in Africa

1909 • 25 min • United States of America

Promoted as authentic safari footage, this early Selig production stages a lion hunt in California rather than Africa. Using animals from Selig’s game preserve and employing a Roosevelt look-alike for cutaways, the film presented itself as a record of Theodore Roosevelt’s celebrated expedition. In reality, it was one of the earliest “fake documentaries,” blending staged action and exotic branding to satisfy audience demand for Roosevelt’s big-game exploits.

Japanese Festival

1909 • 5 min • France

Early 20th century film footage of Japan.

Marstrand

1909 • 13 min • Sweden

Images of Marstrand

Panorama of Rio de Janeiro

1909 • 4 min

Various views of the Palm Tree’s Ally, the Corcovado funicular and the high tide in Rio de Janeiro before Christ the Redeemer came to dominate the scene.

Stockholm

1909 • 3 min

Registration of the city of Stockholm and its surroundings. Shots from a tram of various cityscapes: a park, brass band, shopping street, market, canals and boats.

Gole del Sagittario

1909 • 5 min

Early travelogue

Une Pouponnière à Paris

1909 • 2 min • France

An interest film about a Paris nursery.

Plantation de sucre en Argentine

1909 • 5 min • France, Argentina

The sugarcane industry in Argentina: the factory, the train, the workers' houses, the Indigenous workers.

The Doctor's Bride

1909 • 6 min

Lubin's The Doctor's Bride begins as the physician hero marries the daughter of a deceased patient. Accustomed to deprivation and poverty, the heroine is overwhelmed by the doctor's opulent lifestyle. While sleeping in a comfy chair, she dreams that she is lured away from home by a handsome stranger. As punishment for her philandering, she is reduced to the same poverty from whence she came. At this point, she is aroused from her slumbers with a renewed appreciation for her new spouse. The critic for the trade magazine Variety wrote off The Doctor's Bride as just so much "cheap sentiment."

An Awful Symphony

1909 • 4 min • France

Many of the scenes of this split-reel short about a bizarre group of tramp musicians who disappear into and out of drums, beach umbrellas and whatnots were shot in the street and the others were on stages decorated to look realistic.

His Last Game

1909 • 12 min • United States of America

Bill Going is the star pitcher for his local Choctaw baseball team. Gamblers from Jimtown try to persuade him to throw the game and he shoots and kills them. He is given a reprieve to pitch the last game of the year.

Flower Fields of Haarlem

1909 • 2 min • Netherlands

In the vaults of the Film Museum is a short film which, when it arrived in the 1950s, was given the title Bloemenvelden in Haarlem (The Flower Fields of Haarlem). The film shows the visit of two women and a child to the bulb fields. One woman buys a bouquet of flowers from a farm labourer who is hard at work. At the end of the film, a man joins them. He also buys a bouquet of flowers. Both the husband and wife give their bouquets to the child.

At the Sea Shore

1909 • 10 min

A documentary drama about people who live by the sea.

The Fairy of the Surf

1909 • 7 min • France

Three men go out on the ocean in a row boat. There, they see dancing fairies. Then manage to catch one and take her aboard the boat--taking her back to the castle with them. Then, one of the men asks the fairy to marry him and they do so--though something strange occurs right after the ceremony.

Tobacco Culture

1909 • 7 min • France

The island of Sumatra is famous for its tobacco, as all lovers of the weed know. Its preparation, its growth and the various stages through which the fragrant leaves must pass, before they are ready for the smoker, form the interesting theme of this beautiful colored picture. The first scene shows the young plants growing close together, and the transplanting as they increase in size. The soil is poor for anything but tobacco, and one wonders how a good crop may be obtained in such poor land. We are shown, successively, the natives picking the largest leaves the inspection of the picking, and the natives carrying bundles of green tobacco to the tallying room.

She Would Be an Actress

1909 • 5 min • United States of America

Mrs. Youngwife has become stage struck. She purchases a book, "How to Become a Great Actress," and soon imagines she is ready for her debut. The husband tries in vain to bring her to her senses and follows her in disguise. He breaks up her first performance, thrashes a too ardent admirer and tells her he will get a divorce. She prefers to sacrifice her "art" to her darling hubby and peace reigns forever.

Burnham Beeches

1909 • 4 min • United Kingdom

First film of Burnham Beeches, the famous beauty spot and ultimate film location.

A Trip to the White Sea Fisheries

1909 • 10 min • United Kingdom

Hardy trawlermen brave bad weather and rough seas off the coast of north-west England to bring in the catch.

The False Oath

1909 • 11 min

An adaptation of Balzac's La Grande Bretêche

Leben und Treiben auf dem Viehmarkt

1909 • 2 min • Germany

Life and trade at the Cattle Market on May 5, 1909, in Trier.

Patrician and the Slave

1909 • 10 min • Italy

Numidian queen Afra is sold as a slave to the Roman patrician, Marcella, and is compelled to the care of little Lucina, the daughter of the noblewoman. One day a party of Numidian's tribe, happening along, recognize her and rescue Afra, who kidnaps little Lucina in revenge. A band of Roman warriors pursue the kidnappers, whose vessel has sunk in a storm. Lady Marcella makes an offering at the shrine of the Goddess of the Sea, and in a visitation sees her little child with the Naiads, handmaidens of the sea goddess. She sets out with her retinue for the spot indicated, and is rewarded by the assistance of the sea nymphs, who restore Lucina to her mother.

Napoleon

1909 • 34 min • France

One of the oldest surviving films dramatizing elements of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoléon is played by Maximilien (Max) Charlier, but the director for this Pathé Frères production is unknown.

Bellezze italiche: da Bolzano a Cortina d'Ampezzo

1909 • 7 min

Splendid period images documenting the wonderful landscape that leads from Bolzano to Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Selkirk Common Riding 1899

1909 • 5 min • United Kingdom

Selkirk does its Border traditions proud with a cavalcade of riders and a herculean feat of banner waving.