Down the Hudson

A 1936 documentary film about the London to Portsmouth railway. A lesser known contemporary of Night Mail, also featuring the music of Benjamin Britten and poetry of W.H. Auden.

Likely in June 1897, a group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Women getting onto a rickshaw.

This scene is a part of the very first film shot produced by the Manaki Brothers. Despina, the Janaki and Milton Manaki's grandmother, was recorded weaving in one high-angle shot. For no apparent reason, the first shot made in Macedonia, in the Balkans in fact, made by these two cinematography pioneers, contains peculiar symbolics: at the moment when the grandmother Despina spins the weaving wheel, film starts rolling in our country.

A short film featuring several dancers from different countries: first an Arabian dancer, then an Algerian belly dancer, and finally Scottish highlanders in kilts performing a jig. Section one is rendered in hand-color.

Young people dive into the sea by jumping off a manmade wooden raft, while a small boat loaded with passengers passes by.

A military horseback riding event from 1897.

American Indians dancing.

Released on October 4, 1896 in Lyon ( France ) under the title “ Fêtes de l'inauguration du monument de Guillaume Ier à Breslau : II. - Le voile tombe (Lyon républicain, 4 octobre 1896)”. (catalogue-lumiere.com)

Panorama of Nice from the deck of a ship.

Shot of Venice from the Canal.

African men dance, sing and play instruments.

An impression of the funeral parade for Victoria, Queen of England, filmed in London (via https://catalogue-lumiere.com/le-char-funebre/)

Elaborate floats and costumes parading the streets of Nice.

A steamboat coming to port.

Teasing tigers with meat.

The parade occupies only a small portion of the screen, the crowds are a seething mass that do really move and the Independence Bell is nowhere to be seen.

Lumière Brothers film automobiles driving at the Champs-Elysées.