Cinematic Era: 1900 Vintage

A man exchanges shoe blacking for his friend's soap.

Photographed February 5, 1900.

A black and white silent film with a descriptive title.

It is worthy of note that the film can be watched in a shorter amount of time than it takes to to say the film's title.

A British battery emplacement fires a gun and the gun collapses; its wheels fall from the hillside as a contingent of Boers attack.

A dispatch rider gets through a Boer ambush.

Lumière short on the 1900 World's Fair

At the opening of this picture, a couple are seen in dim outlines, spooning on a park bench. In comes a policeman, armed with a dark-lantern, which he suddenly flashes on the couple. They cease their love-making, in great confusion, and the policeman walks on, but as soon as he is out of sight, the couple commence billing and cooing again. This picture is particularly interesting because of the photographic effect of the sudden flashing of a dark lantern on the couple. It is very cleverly worked out, and the picture has made a big hit wherever it has been shown.

Early film adaptation of The Prodigal Son.

Footage from the Boer War.

Ground level view of a column of Australian cavalry riding down Adderley Street in Cape Town watched by enthusiastic crowds.

A German warship.

Pedestrian traffic on a square, somewhere in Tokyo.

Shot both on and from an elevated electric train.

Directed by F.B. Thanawala.

The approach to a cantilever bridge is shown. The camera is on the front of the car traveling over the rails. The car crosses the cantilever bridge, makes two turns and goes through a station.

Brazilian President Manuel Ferraz de Campos Salles visits Argentina in 1900.

Inauguration of the Expo.

A group of people exiting an enormous carriage.

Visitors come and go to the thermal springs of Le Mont-Dore. Some are wrapped up in warm garments, some arrive in palanquins.

A Lumière Brothers short film.

The title pretty much tells you all there is to know about this Edison film. It runs a very brief 27-seconds and shows a torpedo hitting its target and going off. I think the most fascinating thing about this is that we get a pretty close shot of the explosion and its aftermath. It was rather funny seeing this large explosion and especially seeing how long it took for everything that flew up in the air to land back down.

This picture shows the young cadets going through their daily exercises and drill, and is full of life, and photographically perfect.

This picture shows several buildings which were wrecked and also shows a rear view of this hotel, which is on the highest point of land in Galveston, and in which several thousand people were saved.

This picture was taken at the historical point signified by the above title, where so many daring and venturesome miners have lost their lives in attempting to shoot these mad and turbulent rapids in their flat bottom boats, constructed for the purpose of navigating the treacherous Yukon River, which flows through the rich gold fields of Alaska.

James White, the Edison Company's main filmmaker at the time, realized a burst of creativity during his visit to the 1900 Paris Exposition. It's uncertain who his cameraman was for this journey, but historian Charles Musser suggests that it might've been Alfred C. Abadie. In their Paris Exposition films, they introduced tilting (see 'Panorama of Eiffel Tower') and, although panning and panoramas had already been around for a while, they introduced some novel functions for them.

Near the center of this scene we see the regimental surgeon directing the movements of the Ambulance Corps. Tenderly they pick up the unfortunates and place them in the ambulance. The numbers disabled show the battle has been a hot one, and many a poor fellow, if he survives with injuries, will carry to his grave the scars honorably acquired in his country's cause.

A view of Dam Square and the Damrak. To the right the 'Beurs van Zocher', the commodity exchange building of architect J.D. Zocher.

A Chinese man lures a white girl into his den and teaches her to smoke opium. Police raid the place in a nick of time and arrest him.

A contortionist and her little dog, Zaza

Showing the Whilrpool Rapids as they are seen from the front of a car on the Great Gorge Road.

Workers of all ages depart Oldroyd's wool mill – and the filmmakers' camera is a subject of curiosity.

A white cat is placed on a horse's back, with trainer and two other onlookers. c1900.

The parade of carriages, costumed riders, and exotic animals passing over the bridge at Inverness, Scotland, has attracted a crowd, despite the rain.

This very dramatic scene appears to come from the heart of the Boer War action, but on closer inspection it is clear that Joe Rosenthal staged this scene in South Africa with the help of a co-operative group of cavalry. Staged skirmishes like this were common at the time, with the bulky camera preventing more intimate acquaintance with the fighting.

Spanish lost film about the Valencian carnival directed by Ángel García Cardona.

Spanish lost film directed by Ángel García Cardona. There is, however, a fragment that could correspond to this film.

Guy with a Handkerchief

Back in Blighty - after fighting in the Boer War, these volunteer soldiers are heading home to London and Middlesex

A couple of clowns try to ride a pennyfarthing around a stage, while fighting.

This British Bioscope short from 1900 is a crackerjack piece, on an order with 1903's FIREBOAT 'NEW YORKER' ANSWERING AN ALARM. It's little more than a perfectly framed picture of the Odin slowly leaving harbor, with all her guns ablaze in the roiling clouds and flashes of cordite.

Produced by Casa Lepage, it is the first appearance of tango in the cinema, as it contains brief scenes in which the dancer El Negro Agapito demonstrates figures.

A short film

It's a demolition derby, as two giant industrial chimneys come crashing down to earth. Although this is dynamite footage, no explosives are used - the chimneys are shored up by pit props which are then set aflame. The scurrying figures from the base of the chimney in the first scene offer a real sense of the scale of events.

This film title is almost, though not quite, false advertising. There's certainly a gale, and a wrecked ship, but the one didn't cause the other. This early film records a brutal storm with a close view of waves crashing over a wreck - an empty, broken ship that had beached some time before. Still, the wreck gives a sense of scale to the ferocity of the weather, and is a stark reminder of the damage that a gale can do.

You’ll need your sea legs to watch this film, which was apparently filmed from a perilous position on the ship’s mast - in rough seas. This is a nautical example of a 'phantom ride' - in which a camera is mounted on a moving vehicle - a popular genre among early filmgoers for the still-novel sensation of travel it offered. Thanks to the swelling waves, the effect when projected on a screen is rather queasier than the comparatively gentle train or tram journeys that were more typical phantom ride subjects. Waves on Bow of a Ship was made by Warwick Trading Company, a leading British film production and distribution company between 1898-1915.

A legless beggar with a sign around his neck saying "cripple" pushes himself slowly and laboriously on a trolley along the pavement, soliciting alms from sympathetic passers-by. A policeman gradually approaches from the distance. Feeling suspicious, he taps the beggar on the shoulder, whereupon the beggar leaps up in a panic and runs away on his perfectly functional legs. The policeman trips over the trolley before recovering his footing and setting off in pursuit.

Southampton High Street, train view

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.

British fictional propaganda film on a Boer defeat in the Second Boer War, 27th February 1900

Mitchell & Kenyon.

There's an organ grinder on the stage, standing in front of a backdrop that's supposed to look like the street. Some young women come up and do a high-speed acrobatic dance around him.

A Boer throws a bomb into the British Red Cross tent and wounds a nurse.