All Films

Storm at Sandown I.O.W.

1900 • 1 min

Victorian filmmakers loved few sights more than crashing waves. Who those filmmakers were in this particular case is not documented, but they have chosen two fine vantage points from which to capture the scene. Unfortunately the excellent compositions are not well served by the exposure – moreover, sadly the nitrate print was decaying by the time it arrived at the BFI over forty years ago. The unsteadiness of the image was in that original print and therefore also in the copies made from it. For all its photographic flaws, the excitement of the film is still palpable.

Rough Sea

1900 • 1 min • United Kingdom

Shots of waves crashing upon rocks just out of frame.

Spanish Bullfight

1900 • 1 min • France

With a crowded arena in the background, a stationary camera records a bull charging a picador astride his horse. An attendant on foot throws stones at the rump of the horse to get it to move. Various toreadors run past the bull to try to get him to charge or at least run about.

20,000 Employees Entering Lord Armstrong's Elswick Works, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

1900 • 3 min • United Kingdom

This film is part of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection - an amazing visual record of everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Vue prise d'une plate-forme mobile III

1900 • 1 min

Third of a series of films showing visitors to the Paris Exposition 1900 standing on a mobile wooden platform.

Brook Trout Fishing

1900 • 1 min • United States of America

Muskoka Lake District, Canada. Beautiful picture, showing a man casting a fly, getting a strike, and landing the trout.

Above the Limit

1900 • 1 min • United States of America

Filming of a character sketch by the well-known vaudevillian Charles E. Grapewin. On a bare stage backed by a dark curtain, a man dressed in a three-piece suit and overcoat holds a racing program and excitedly watches a race supposedly taking place offstage.

Muzaffaruddin Shah in celebration of Eid Gol

1900 • 4 min • Iran

this film is a documentary about the trip of Muzaffar al-Din Shah Qajar to Belgium. In Muzaffar al-Din Shah's travelogue, there is a report that is in fact the same as the text of this film: Today is Eid al-Adha and we were invited to watch. We went to watch. Mr. Ashraf, the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Court were also on the sidewalk. It was a very spectacular holiday. All the carriages were decorated with flowers and the carriages and wheels were filled with flowers, so that the carriages could not be found, and the women in the carriages passed in front of us with bouquets of flowers, and the photographer Bashi was taking cinematographic photos.

La toilette du petit chien

1900 • 1 min • France

A man and a child are washing a small dog in a tub, while a large dog is circling around them, barking.

Cyrano de Bergerac

1900 • 2 min • France

Considered the first motion picture to employ both color and sound, the only film record ever made of the original star of Rostand's famous play performing a scene from his most famous role. It is accompanied by a sound-on-cylinder recording of Coquelin's voice reciting one of Cyrano's speeches.

Bird's-Eye View of Dock Front, Galveston

1900 • 1 min • United States of America

At the first news of the disast by cyclone and tidal wave that devastated Galveston on Saturday, September 8th, 1900, we equipped a party of photographers and sent them by special train to the scene of the ruins. Arriving at the scene of desolation shortly after the storm had swept over the city, our party succeeded, at the risk of life and limb, in taking about a thousand feet of motion pictures, although Galveston was under martial law and photographers were shot down at sight by the excited police. The series, taken as a whole, gives a definite idea of the most terrible disaster since the Johnstown flood of 1889.

A Nymph of the Waves

1900 • 1 min • United States of America

A woman in ballet slippers wearing a large white hat and a long white dress - with ruffles, puffy sleeves and petticoats - dances across water with roiling waves behind her. She holds the edges of the skirt with her hands, lifting and twirling, sometimes exposing her bloomers and a dark garter on one leg. Her style combines ballet with the exuberant kicks and twirls of a burlesque dance hall. With churning waves behind her, the water seems to wash beneath her feet. The film of the dancer, "M'lle. Cathrina Bartho" (1899), is superimposed on that of the water, "Upper Rapids, from Bridge" (1896).

Danse directoire

1900 • 2 min • France

On a stage in front of a painted backdrop representing a park, Blanche and Louise Mante, one dressed in a man "Incroyable" suit from the 1st Empire period, dance.

Battleship Odin Firing All Her Guns

1900 • 1 min • United Kingdom

Film produced by William K. Dickson’s British Mutoscope and Biograph Company.

Serpentine Dance

1900 • 1 min • France

1900 Gaumont version of the ubiquitous Serpentine dance, this one hand tinted. Filmmaker anonymous. (not to be mistaken with Alice Guy-Blaché's version with Madame Ondine, from the same year and company)

Arrivée de cyclistes à Turin

1900 • 1 min • France

A bunch of cyclists going past the camera.

Queen Victoria's Visit to Dublin

1900 • 2 min • United Kingdom

Solar Eclipse

1900 • 2 min • United Kingdom

The magic of a real solar eclipse filmed on 28 May, 1900 by a famous magician, Nevil Maskelyne, while on an expedition by The British Astronomical Association to North Carolina.

Le village de Namo - Panorama pris d'une chaise à porteurs

1900 • 1 min • France

The film is a panorama shot-scene lasting just under a minute. The panorama film, as coined by Lumière, is a moving-camera shot--usually accomplished by placing the camera on a moving transport, such as a boat or train.

Dutch Fishing Fleet

1900 • 1 min • Netherlands

Tracking shot across a bay showing a large number of fishing boats.

The Olympic Games of 1900

1900 • 7 min

A series of short motion-studies of athletes for the 1900 Olympics in Paris.

Danse espagnole de la Feria Sevillanos

1900 • 1 min • France

A girl in a Sevillian dress dances to the sound of music played a couple of men at the "Féria Sevillanos" [sic] during the Exposition Universelle de Paris - though she does not look a real Sevillian dancer.

A Dull Razor

1900 • 1 min • United States of America

This picture shows an old gentleman seated at his shaving table. The razor is evidently giving him a great deal of trouble...

Ride on the Peak Tramway

1900 • 3 min

Take an exhilarating ride on one of the most spectacular rail journeys in the world, the Hong Kong Peak Tram. The route opened in 1888, and this 'phantom ride' (a popular early film genre for which the camera was mounted on a moving vehicle) offers glimpses of the harbour and lower Hong Kong in the distance as you descend from 400 meters. But as a funicular railway, the most heartstopping moment is the sight of the upward tram arriving on what looks like a collision course...