Cinematic Era: 1900 Vintage

School is over for the day. A stationary camera is trained on the door of the high school at the top of a few stairs. A man and small boy emerge, followed by wave after wave of boys, each in jacket and tie, most wearing caps. A few are arm in arm. At least 150 boys and young men appear. Then about 120 women and girls appear, parting to go in either direction down the sidewalk in front of the school. All are in long skirts and wear big hats; most wear blouses and jackets or coats. Some are adults; most seem older than the boys who've left just ahead of them. The last person to leave is a gentleman.

Two bad boys enter the kitchen. One climbs to the kitchen table and takes down the old lamp, the other goes to the flour barrel and scoops out some flour, pouring it into the chimney until it is filled to the top. The lamp is then replaced in the bracket. Grandma enters, scratches a match, removes the lamp chimney, when the flour falls upon her head. It sticks in her hair and fills her eyes, but this is where she turns the tables.

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.

This picture shows the remains of one of the docks, several freight cars being piled one upon the other, while the most interesting part of the picture shows two schooners literally smashed one into the other, forming a most picturesque mass of wreckage.

The single camera position is from the top of a building identified as the Trocadero Palace; The camera is pointed toward the Eiffel Tower. The film shows only up to the first arch of the Eiffel Tower.

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

Jeanne Chasles and Achille Viscusi dances.

Solser en Hesse was a short Dutch silent film featuring the comedians Lion Solser and Piet Hesse. the film was first distributed in the Netherlands by 'Edison's Ideal' in 1900, and second film starring the two men and under the same name was released in 1906 by 'The Royal Bioscope'. Both films are lost.

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...

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

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

A gardener is watering a garden. A prankster stands on his hose halting the flow until he looks at the nozzle and gets a stream of water to the face. He notices the prankster and gives him his comeuppance. Remake of the Lumiere film Arroseur et arrosé.

A performance with sound from comedian Jules Moy.

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

The launching of the ship Varèse in Livourne.

A chimney sweep and a miller become involved in a street fight. The sweep has a bag of soot on his back, and the miller a bag of flour.

An early short with a self-explanatory title.

Using photographs and films shot by a French Consul, Auguste François, in turn-of-the-century China, documents the historic events and everyday life he saw around him. Narration uses his letters, diaries, and notes.

Variant titles from Biograph production logs indicate that the 15th Infantry was on the way to China. Other sources indicate that the regiment was headed for the Philippines. Governors Island, NY.

Naval ratings pulling along naval guns during the Boer War.

Vesuvius erupts and people escape from a room as the ceiling falls.

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

his film was shot in an alley of San Francisco's Chinatown on Saturday, September 15, 1900, at midday. The topography of the site (sloping down to the far street), the width of the alley, the location of utility poles.

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

One of Alberto Santos Dumont's dirigibles is led out of a hangar.

This panoramic scene is taken from a Seine steamboat and gives a rapid view of the banks of the river...

Butterfly dance.

This scene is laid in the parlor of a New York tenement. Two watchers at the wake are smoking and drinking, while the widow is weeping over the coffin. The attention of the three is attracted for an instant, and the supposed corpse rises up, drinks all the beer in the pitcher which is standing on a table nearby, and lies down in the coffin again. The mourners return, and seeing that the beer is gone, engage in a controversy over it. During the scrap the corpse jumps out of the coffin and takes part in the melee.

This picture shows the Cadets marching, countermarching and a great many interesting manoeuvres.

Filmed off the coast of Rhode Island, this Edison short takes place on the U.S. torpedo boat Morris as we see some men loading up a torpedo that is eventually shot off. This film lasts only 75-seconds but it's almost as if the director wanted to save the best for last. The first sixty-seconds are pretty lifeless as we barely get to see what's going on but once the torpedo is shot off things pick up.

A combination of the picture entitled "The Ballet of the Ghosts," and a surf scene; the resulting effect being that the ghostly figures rise up out of the surf and come to the shore, cast their draperies aside and dance a few steps of the ballet, after which they again take up their draperies, and having covered themselves, retreat into the waves.

A Chinese dragon parade.

A short film

During the terrific storm all of the light craft along the dock front was lifted out of the water and washed up into the streets, many of them being carried for miles inland. This subject shows a number of boatmen who have banded together to get their craft back into the water, a panoramic view being taken of the schooner as she glided sideways down the improvised ways, forming a very interesting subject. 60 feet. $9.00.

The scene opens by showing the village girls driving home a herd of cows, and shows the native peasantry of Switzerland returning from their daily occupation watching the herds. After driving the cattle to their shelter, the boys and girls congregate in front of the old barn and go through a native dance, to the amusement of the spectators. These pictures are marvelously clear and distinct, showing every feature of the participants.

Shows a party of English people in their chairs. This is the only safe way of getting about in Canton, as the streets are indescribably filthy.

Silent record of a performance by Joseph Pujol. He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to seemingly fart at will.

Studies on human pathological locomotion.

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

A short film from the Lumière brothers showing crowds walking.

Shows all the prominent buildings on this thoroughfare, ending with a close view of the base of the Eiffel Tower, with the Trocadero Palace in the background.

Filmed in July 1900, on the Champs Elysées in Paris, France.

Shots of waves crashing upon rocks just out of frame.

Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode (27 September 1875 - 17 October 1966) was a French dancer of the Belle Époque. She is seen here performing a traditonal Javanese dance.

A short film screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020 and believed to have been directed by Georges Méliès.

It's what it says on the label: a panoramic shot of East Galveston, right after the Storm of the Century came through, ripping up trees and destroying house like they were made of cards. Then, a decade and a half later came another Storm of the Century for Galveston.

Horse drawn fire engines en route to an emergency.

A man flirts with a milk maid.

In the distance is seen a number of grey objects rapidly approaching, which, upon drawing closer, are recognized as a company of Boer cavalry. As they draw nearer, you can see that they are straining every nerve and urging their horses to the utmost speed. Waving their sabres aloft on they come, so that the audience involuntarily makes an effort to move from their seats in order to avoid being trampled under the horses.

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

Several painters unsuccessfully try to paint something on a canvas. A man enters the scene and with a single brushstroke achieves a huge sign that says: Oliver, Juncal 108.