All Films

This early silent era film was released in France circa 1908 by Segundo de Chomón. It is partially hand coloured and shows several Japanese characters and eventually a worm change into a butterfly which while flapping it's wings changes colours as it flies.

At the beginning of this film two women come onstage dressed in Oriental fashion. They present a shadow play theatre.

For a short comedy of rare merit this subject is unexcelled. A chalk line series of grotesque caricatures enacted in the land of puppets. A fickle maiden gets herself into numerous embarrassing complications with her host of admirers, but the artist with lightning rapidity overcomes all obstacles and brings the maiden out victorious.

A young woman passing through a cemetery at night is suddenly startled by a voice coming from one of the graves. She wishes to rush away, but the ghost appearing compels her to remain. He explains to the terrified girl that she must go to the kingdom of Satan and get a bottle of the Water of Life, which she must bring back to him. The girl consents to do as he desires and starts forth on her expedition after the precious fluid. She summons a lot of soldiers and friends to her aid, and we follow the whole army down into the bowels of the earth. (Moving Picture World)

Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of imagination. A magician shapes his cane into a hoop with strange properties for a young girl. Costume changes and city promenades give way towards greater abstraction as the film becomes absorbed by what goes on inside the ring.

This is not only a colored film of great beauty, but one showing a series of clever trick pictures in which great ingenuity on the part of the operator is exhibited.

Female magicians turn people into origami roosters and vice versa.

Two rag-pickers enter their hovel with their bags of scraps. After a little preliminary comedy they set up a white sheet. One of the rag-pickers now takes a handful of scraps from the bag and throws them in confusion on the sheet. They immediately begin to dance and hop about on the white background and when they stop they have made a complete likeness of the King of England. The scraps are taken off and another handful thrown on, which in some manner resolve themselves into the likeness of the President of France.

This early D.W. Griffith short shows the director's interest in Jewish ghetto life, portrayed here with sympathy and sentimentality. The melodramatic plot involves the conflict between generations in an immigrant Jewish family.

A family tries to eat dinner, but the table vanishes and reappears, changes shape and location, all in the usual manner laid down by Melies, but here copied by Segundo de Chomón.

A woodsman leaves a hut followed by a woman with their baby. Nearby some men chop down a tree. The baby is left outside the hut, but an eagle flies away with it.

This French film isn't that well known today but it will mainly appeal to those film buffs with a thing for early cinema or those wanting to see some fantasy sequences but those there will probably be disappointed. The film runs just a few seconds short of four minutes as several women are dressed up as bees dancing around their hive. The "Queen Bee" goes to take a nap and she's attacked by a spider. The spider sequence is what gets this film a mention by fantasy fans but sadly this scene takes place around the 3:13 mark and lasts just a few seconds.

When the entire kitchen staff falls asleep from exhaustion, a dwarf appears and animates various objects via stop motion -- including their hands, which he cuts off while they snooze -- to do their work.

An enthusiastic young couple is astounded with modern technology's giant leaps in the fascinating field of electricity.

The first scene presents before the astonished eyes of the spectators a solid piece of marble, which the minute it is placed on a table seems to take life, and one can follow a snake-like line branding on the polished face of the stone the name of the house of Pathé Frères. As soon as this stone has been engraved, as by magic, a handsome young lady appears with a huge lump of clay covered with a cloth. As soon as the cloth is removed from the soft mass it starts whirling and turning as if stricken mad, and one is asking one's self what all the contentions are going to lead to, when the vague shape of an animal not yet discernible seems to appear, and before one has time to make one's mind as to the category of brutes to which it belongs one sees the form of a remarkably well made orang-utan modelled out of the clay, who calmly smokes his pipe. Then the statue is removed by the same winning young lady and another covered block of the same substance is carried forward.

Based on the story of "Sleeping Beauty" by Charles Perrault. Titles read: The Christening of the Princess; The Good Fairies Fatal Prediction; The Royal Edict; The Princess is Sixteen Years Old; Searching for the Princess; The Prediction Comes True; Thou Shalt Sleep for a Hundred Years; A Hundred Years later the Prince Charming Goes Hunting; Prince Charming Dismisses His Escort; The Castle of Sleep; The Guard's Hall; You Have Been a Long Time Coming, prince; The Wedding of the Sleeping Beauty to Prince Charming.

Short film about a magic ride

A Segundo de Chomón trick film.

As a newsboy is playing a game on the sidewalk with a friend, two men come near to them, and then stand in a position where they cannot be seen from the sidewalk. When an attractive woman walks past them, the two men follow her. Sensing that they have bad intentions, the newsboy follows them to see what they are up to. When his suspicions are confirmed, he tries to come up with a plan to protect the woman.

When his wife dies, knight Svend Dyring gets married to noble Mrs. Guldborg. Little does the good knight know that Mrs. Guldborg is in fact pure evil, and that she and her daughter Ragnhild torment the knight’s children when he’s not home. One day, when Svend Dyring is injured in a hunting accident, the eldest daughter Regitze takes upon herself to take care of her father. Mrs. Guldborg looks on in envy, while the relationship between the father and his daughter is strengthened. She’s secretly planning how to get the daughter off the scene. (stumfilm.dk)

What is more miserable than love-blighted life? For the heart that truly loves can never forget. Such is the sad fate of the hero of this Biograph story.

A moon-woman shakes a Pierot costume and manifests a Pierot clown. She does this four more until there are five Pierots crowded on the ledge of the moon. They fall to the earth and dance like tops turning one by one into Columbine maidens.

In this funny picture we see the vacuum cleaner, the modern dust eradicator, performing some very droll tricks. As soon as the fellow turns on the air then the fun begins. It is all accomplished through some clever trick photography. First we see two attendants start out to do a cleaning job, and while they stop to take some refreshments, two men, who happen to be passing, take the machine and start down the sheet to have some fun. They meet a woman with a dog on a leash, and at a turn of the wheel, the dog and its mistress are quickly drawn into the spout. Next a nursemaid comes sauntering down the street, and when they level the spout at her she meets the same fate. A girl and her lover are the next to disappear off the face of the earth, and still they go along, looking for more victims. (Moving Picture World)

Jose, a handsome young Mexican, leaves his home in the Sierra Madre Mountains to seek his fortune in the States. On leaving, his dear old mother bestows upon him her blessing, presenting him with a pair of gauntlets, upon the dexter wrist of which she has embroidered a Latin Cross.