The Strength and Agility of Insects

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Topical Budget 545-2. Newsreel of the 1920s aerial stuntwoman and barnstormer, Sara “Babe” Kalishek. We see her on the ground at first, standing in front of a plane before we see her wing walking on a plane in flight, then climbing from one plane onto the wing of another.

Prix et Profits is a 20-minute short film originally made for educational purposes and released in 9.5mm format.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.

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.

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.

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.

La remise des décorations

Documentary about the lost 1914 film "Sperduti nel buio". Film historian Denis Lotto journeys across Europe following the trail of the lost movie.

Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.