All Films

A carriage draws up, wheeling to a stop right in front of the camera. There is a cut and the camera has drawn back. The duchess steps out, pauses, then is on her way.

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

Footage from the Boer War.

Naval Exercise, United Kingdom

Troyes captured by the Lumiere Brothers

Filmed from the front of a steam launch in a late Victorian summer, this film offers a glimpse of our 19th century ancestors enjoying their leisure time. The River Thames is crowded with pleasure boats as we glide under Henley Bridge. Ladies in white lace dresses recline under parasols as gentlemen with impressive moustaches take the oars. But even in this antiquated idyllic scene, advertising hoardings on the riverbank try to persuade the moneyed classes to part with their cash. The technique of placing the camera on a moving vehicle, here a boat, was one of the most popular film effects in the very early cinema period. The waterside panorama method employed here was particularly popular for travelogues. Cecil Hepworth, who made this film, was convinced at the time that the cinema would prove to be used mostly for news reporting, but said that work such as this "showed some slight perception of scenic value". That makes this almost an early art film. -BFI

Showing the tapping of the furnace, and the running of the molten metal into the moulds at Elswick yard.

It looks like peasants dancing in their holiday finery, the women wearing long skirts, the men britches and flowered hats. They set into pairs and walk in a circle, while the fiddler plays.

In this spirited and suggestive film, an aggressive young man is drenched in rich, high-protein comeuppance, after he attempts to tell a dairymaid her buttery business.

Showing the chief and his fire wagon, chemical engine, water tower, and several three-horse engines at full speed on their way to the fire, Buffalo, New York.

Several scenes of Sanger’s Circus parading through Windsor Great Park after meeting Queen Victoria on the terrace at Windsor Castle. This scene is missing, but the rest of the extraordinary cavalcade of circus wagons (or “tableaux carriages”, as they were known) and animals are present.

A beautiful phantom ride across the Firth of Forth from Dalmeny near Edinburgh to Dunfermline, crossing the famous Forth Bridge, then less than a decade old. The existing print runs 7 minutes; the Warwick catalogue entry lists it as 12 minutes, “all from one continuous negative, the longest, most picturesque and interesting cinematograph film ever photographed”.

A postman sits in a garden chair and is served with food by a maid. He kisses her. The amorous couple are then squirted with water from a garden syringe by two lads who have been watching in the background. The postman gives chase but trips over the water bucket.

"A splendid marching picture of the brave Gordons in bearskins and kilts passing before Lord Wolseley."

Two women in long skirts, wearing hats, and carrying umbrellas, gossip beside a fence. Two men on the other side of the fence reach through from underneath and nail the women's skirts to the boards. Off the men run leaving the women to discover their fate. What will they do?

A mounted black horse gallops.

Two mounted bay horses follow each other in line.

Men leaving for a fox hunt.

Street scene: Arch de Triumph.

A moustachioed Frenchman presents his performing cats.

A jousting event.

Taken during the land parade in honor of Admiral Dewey, just before the turn into 72nd street...

Soldiers parade to the sound of military marches during the inauguration ceremony of Victor Emanuel II's monument in Turin.

From a single camera position, two young women are photographed lighting a cigarette. After several puffs, one of the young ladies becomes faint, and the other one tries to revive her fallen friend.