The Strength and Agility of Insects

A method soldier boys have for amusing themselves in their leisure moments. New comrades are frequently initiated by the old-fashioned sport of tossing in a blanket. The newly arrived recruit, who is the victim of their sport, enjoys himself, perhaps, less than the other participants.

William K.L. Dickson brings his hat from his one hand to the other and moves his head slightly, as a small nod toward the audience. This was the first film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company to be shown to public audiences and the press.

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

Prix et Profits is a 20-minute short film originally made for educational purposes and released in 9.5mm format. As the title suggests, the film follows the supply chain of a potato, from farmers to consumers, and examines the mechanisms of capitalism.

Shurochka, the film’s hero, spends her life walking from one village to another in order to weigh tractors. Yet, this makes just one part of her existence. She dances to Utiosov’s songs, she smiles to the pictures of old Soviet actresses and shows a wonderful taste for life amidst the lonely provincial disorderliness.

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

This film records the vast public response to the early death of Vera Kholodnaya, the first star of Russian cinema.

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau

La remise des décorations

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

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.

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.

A troupe of gypsies takes a traveler along with them on their day trip.

These two views were taken during the celebrations given in 1896 on the occasion of the millennium of the foundation of the kingdom of Hungary. Horsemen and men on foot parade, all dressed in historic uniforms.

Experimental 8mm film by Karpo Godina.

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.