Cinematic Era: 1911 Vintage

Early 20th century film footage of Japan.

Early short about balloons.

Maurice Schwartzman gets an assignment to take a photo of a strongman. The big fellow, however, doesn't want his picture taken, and is willing to throw Schwartzman out of a window to avoid it.

With a cast of Smolensky and Jewish troupe.

Comedy starring Yvette Andréyor and the director, Léonce Perret.

This film incorporates scenes taken by a Thanhouser film crew rushed to Austin, Pennsylvania, following news of a flood. On Saturday, September 30, 1911, the Bayless Dam broke, and a huge wall of water, followed by a fire, devastated the town and killed over 100 of its citizens.

A young woman calls in a plumber to fix her radiator, igniting a string of romantic complications.

During the Civil War, a woman helps her injured husband by delivering an important message to his general.

Monthus gets a job as a billposter, but every time he tries to put one up, some one stops him. A bicyclist runs into him, or a cop chases him off, or some other disaster, usually causing him to take a prat fall.

In 1911 the International Exposition of Industry and Labour took place in Turin to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian National Unity. The first part of the film, "Nei cantieri dell'Esposizione", shows an unusual view of the river Po with the construction sites of the pavilions. The construction sites are also visited by the then Prime Minister Luigi Luzzatti. The second part of the video presents "La giornata d'esultanza", or the celebrations for the inauguration on April 29, 1911, in the presence of royalties of Italy.

A farce in which a clumsy man falls into tar, so that every thing he encounters sticks to him. A clumsy man falls on the street in wet tar. After that everything sticks to him: a baby, a mannequin, feathers, paper and a stair runner. When he comes home, his wife (a disguised man) hard-handedly gives him a bath.

An early historical film.

Film footage of the royal wedding

Chrysanthemums.

A picture of the destruction of the world by a flood. 3317 years B.C: The Lord, observing the wickedness of the world, decides to destroy it. He instructs Noah to build an ark, in which he and his three sons, his wife and their wives take refuge. Noah is also told to take into the ark two of each of all living creatures. Noah does as he is told; The rain descends upon the earth, covering it with water, and the peoples are destroyed-- but Noah, his sons and their families are saved. "The entire picture is a marvelous rendition of one of the most dramatic stories in all history. The producer has looked carefully after costuming and surroundings, and he has displayed a marvelous breadth of Biblical knowledge to reproduce a scene of this character so faithfully and so realistically." - Moving Picture World, February 18, 1911

Titine and her family go for a fast-motion bicycle ride while enveloping the whole public sphere in their raging tornado of bodily ventilation. They knock over pedestrians, café diners, and horse-drawn carriages. Finally, they are steamrolled by the superior fan of a gas-guzzling automobile. Translated from Le Bulletin Pathé, they “are swept in turn like simple fetuses”

It’s high time for tomboy Titine to settle down and learn a useful trade. Instead, she terrorizes any shop owner foolish enough to audition her labor. In a throwback to the third episode, where she apprentices for a milliner, Titine drops a carton of fancy hats that are crushed by a steamroller. Then she throws a cake at the baker’s best customer and insults a woman with large feet at the shoe store.

Military review in the Cousiño Park, Santiago.

Documentary about colonized Africa.

Early Calino short

Italian documentary on mountain climbing.

Singer Pik Nik tests the power of song with an earth-shaking voice that causes people to pass out, walls to collapse, cars to go backwards—and eventually lands him in jail. (MoMA)

The film begins with the Count giving an actress a necklace. However, after her performance, the valuable necklace is missing and so the actress goes to hire some detectives to find it. I loved the strange detective agency in the film. The place had a sliding door, chains on the wall and detectives seem to magically appear out of the floor. It was very kooky but fun.

After being struck by a power line, a pig becomes electrically charged, complicating a farmer's attempts to catch.

The daughter of a boatman falls in love with a shore-dweller, and runs away in the face of her father's disapproval.

A Italian lady gets kidnapped by Turks and the Italian Army comes to the rescue!

A crude washerwoman in the military entourage of Napoleon is snubbed by the new aristocrats in his court.

A couple’s fight over dinner leads to spiralling domestic abuse that spreads all over town. (MoMA)

A short travelogue created by Murray Rosenberg, who served as Honorable Secretary of the English Zionist Federation. Filmed in the area of Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, it is the earliest surviving full-length film made there and one of the earliest Zionist films.

A largely intact 1911 Australian film, produced by the Photo Vista Company for Pathe Freres; A drama about a miner who is swindled out of his gold claim.

A journey to ancient Egypt. The temples of Luxor and Thebes; the gigantic tombstones of Ptolemy and the Pharaohs; the colossal statues of Mennon. Prod.: Eclair. 35mm. L.: 100 m. D.: 5’ a 18 f/s. B&w, tinted and toned. Preserved in 2016 from a nitrate print.

Filmed by Jorge Goitizolo. It is a longer-than-usual film, shown as the main program in a single screening.

Olimpo Cinema Company. Filmed by Fernando Lund.

It can be considered a triumph of national cinema and competes successfully with films from Pathé Frères, Gaumont, and Berlin Kineman. The film showcases beautiful waterfalls and cascades that evoke the Rhine Falls.

The owners of the Cinema Theater have hit the nail on the head with the installation in the park and with the film of the Ravine, a lively and interesting parade of our world, which already runs to mass with a sleepy face and crosses the Bridge of Sighs and leaves the church with a weary air, as it goes down to the bathroom contentedly and happily soaks in the waves. There is a part of the film especially for shoemakers. It is the one about the staircase of the baths, in which only feet are seen parading by, quick and small, fine and ordinary, rushing down the stairs.

Cinema Theater Company. Filmed by Jorge Goitizolo

Cinema Theater Company. Filmed by Jorge Goitizolo

Olimpo Cinema Company. Filmed by Fernando Lund

Cinema Company Theater. Filmed by C. L. Chester

A crook kidnaps the son of his own son's benefactor.

Student Lumbla, hungover, out of money, and in debt, attempts to commit suicide, but is stopped by a friend. Together they decide to find a way to get money.

Mr. Mericke is a simple-minded, small-town man from the German provinces at the end of the imperial era. He arrives in the big city and can’t stop marveling: the tranquility and slow pace of his hometown are jarringly contrasted here with the fast-paced rhythm of the global metropolis, which deeply unsettles the visitor.

1911 Australian film, now considered lost.

Cowboy Borneo Bill is in love with Gracie Jackson, the daughter of a miner with whom he had the bad idea of getting into a fight.

"Panoramic views of the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in Arizona: shots include rocky hill above dam, water rushing through portions of dam, and a car being driven on road across dam. Since a flag waves from back of car, film may have been shot at dedication ceremonies, March 18, 1911 at which TR delivered the principal address. The Roosevelt dam, a major irrigation project in the Salt River Valley near Phoenix, is largely a result of TR's land reclamation efforts when he was President"--Theodore Roosevelt Association catalog.

Pathé Frères short showing the manufacturing process of artificial flowers and their various uses.

A boy visits a cafe and start smoking and drinking.

The protagonist of this brilliant little film is a good bourgeois man of the early 20th century and a proud representative of the many “moralizers” of Italian history. A letter from the Society for Morals unleashes his puritanical ardour: what can he do to “energetically counter” the proliferation of works of art that harm the public’s delicate sense of decency?

Comedy short directed by Polidor

Intrepid aviator H.J.D. Astley laughs off another crash.

A record of the Kearton-Jones expedition to Kenya, in which Colonel Jones and his two cowboys lasso a variety of wild animals, including a lioness, a cheetah and rhinoceros.