Grand Display of Brock's Fireworks at the Crystal Palace
3.31904HD
An actuality of the Brock's fireworks factory to celebrate its 40th anniversary organizes. The final shot has two flaming portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, originally presented by Brock's at the coronation in 1902. The film is a cornucopia of colors, as it was originally a...
With a dual motion a cruise ship and a fishing boat pass one another on the Nile and butlers in turbans set up a wooden gangway. Thanks to a rope and pulley system cows climb skywards then disappear into the hold of the sailing vessel. On the bank, black-haired women rock back and forth, bursting...
In 1953, in an old cabinet of a former photographer from Zermatt, a first mountaineering film was found. It was a silent film from the first era showing the ascent of the Matterhorn by a group of guides across the Hornli ridge. The film is attributed to the American Frederick Burlingham and dated...
Animated film featuring the hand of Walter R. Booth drawing a coster and his donah who come to life and dance. The hand then crumples up the paper and dispenses it in the form of confetti. (BFI)
In 1906, the Arlberg Railway, which connects the Austrian cities of Innsbruck and Bludenz, is the only east-west mountain railway in Austria. This 340-second "ghost railroad ride" shows the view from the back of a train, though I'm not sure if it's heading east or west. This kind of film, in vogue...
This fragment comprises just over half of the original film and features a parade of partially-submerged submarines and destroyers launching torpedoes into netting rigged alongside the Dreadnought.
A cheeky female jester uses the smoke of her cigarette to make things appear and disappear. After showing her talents by playing with a chair or a dog, she lets clowns appear; one female, and two male. The male clowns fight each other over the girl who gets changed over and over again by the jester.
Take a trip in time and space to Edwardian Britain, and travel along the North Wales coast. Starting in the walled city of Chester you hop on a train to Llandudno, mosey around a few castles, and take a horse-drawn carriage through Snowdonia. Clearly a holiday for the wealthier set, there's...
It might not take you long to cotton on to the trick of this film, but the results are still impressive. Though the various strings, wools and embroideries if this film are certainly animated in one sense, it is not through stop-motion animation. The time-consuming process of manipulating threads...
The devil hijacks a train trip in France. Made by magician turned filmmaker Walter Booth, who established the Charles Urban Trading Company to make films in his own London garden.
“In the films of Méliès, it is the whole world of gilt-edged books from awards ceremonies that comes to life; the world of fairy tales revisited by the magic lantern, the world of a trip around the globe, of famous tightrope walkers and illusionists, of fake, plush-fringed Gothic furniture.”...
Execution of Li-Tang the Chunchus Chief of the Manchurian Bandits
01904HD
Newsreel footage of an execution by beheading of Li-Tang, the Chinches chief of a band of Manchurian bandits. Shot during the Russo Japanese war by the Charles Urban Trading Company. Charles Urban was formerly a partner with the Warwick Trading company who shot many newsreels of the day.
