La remise des décorations

A new film compiled from the BFI National Archive's unparalleled holdings of early films of China, features films from 1900-48 filmed across China. The cinematic journey of Around China with a Movie Camera contains many films which may never have been seen in China, or at the very least not for over 70 years. These travelogues, newsreels and home movies were made by a diverse group of British and French filmmakers, some professionals, but mainly enthusiastic amateurs, including intrepid tourists, colonial-era expatriates and Christian missionaries.

A nervous, careless recording of a trip through India and Nepal at the beginning of the 1970s. Fleeting impressions of faces, landscapes, temples, people and things. Images that, having been captured in a ephemeral medium, proceed to fade away (although without aging), alongside the river of time.

Images of the Church of the Sagrada Familia by Antoni Gaudí confronted with brief flashes of housing projects and industrial areas. The furious display of a effervescent imagination is opposed to a grey functionality.

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.

On the Sorrento peninsula, orange and lemon groves stretch all the way to the coast. In the orange plantations, the high wooden frames are covered with mats to protect the trees from intense sunlight. The function of the artificial irrigation system is demonstrated. The oculation of trees is demonstrated in a young plantation. The oranges are cleaned on the spot, then sent to the laundry, cleaned, dried and made ready for dispatch. In a lemon plantation, many pickers stand on ladders on a tall tree and remove the fruit. The lemons are sorted, wrapped in tissue paper and packaged in home and large-scale factories. Before being exported, the goods are checked again for quality.

This non-narrative short film examines one of the great American icons: the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The film was conceived by its co-directors, Marlon Johnson and Dennis Scholl, along with the Louisville Orchestra's conductor, Teddy Abrams, to be screened set to a live performance by the orchestra of Claude Debussy's "Jeux".

Between 1950 and 1955, Henri Langlois tried to produce, on behalf of the Cinémathèque française, several films devoted to great artists, with their cooperation, by entrusting them with virgin film stock. Wrote Langlois on the unfinished project, epic in scope: "We had the idea of ​​asking poets, painters, scholars, writers and even repressed filmmakers [...] to make films in 16mm, with the means at hand, without taking into account any commercial concern or censorship." What precious little came of the project was eight minutes of film from Matisse and twenty-some from Marc Chagall, released at a later date.

Life on the breadline in the 1930s was hard enough, but times were desperate when you fell beneath it. Hunger marches organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement drew attention to the cause, but this left-wing collective picked up a cine-camera. The fictional story at the heart of the film is somewhat melodramatic, but the authentic surroundings give its message realism and weight.

A movie follows a regular working day of a woman who works in a factory. She wakes up at 3am and goes to sleep at 10pm.

A short, early documentary work showing insects exhibiting extreme strength and agility.

From Elsinore shipyard launched the steamer AP Bemstorff sliding slowly out into the harbor.

Farmers' wives from Amager selling flowers.

Street Trading. Fishermen's wives from Skovshoved sell their fish from the stalls at Gammel Strand. Anker Kirkeby is in the picture.

The horse-drawn tram "Hønen" comes running along Nørregade and into the Old Square. "Hønen"'s last trip was on June 14, 1915.

Horse carriages seen at the Copenhagen Town Square.

From inside a tower, a man admires an artistic rendition of another tower.

The remains of the Baltic Violence have been eroded away by the large steam excavator. There is a man standing at the railway cutting as trains pass. He throws something into the railway cutting. This person is seen in several of the recordings from 1913. It may be journalist Anker Kirkeby.

Street Trading in Copenhagen in about 1913. The old butcher stalls by Nicholas Church, called the "stomach" before demolition.

Swimming. The Russian swimmer Romantschenko visits Copenhagen. He jumps into the water and swims around in the harbor, and he is later seen together with journalist Anker Kirkeby.

A documentary short film showing the flying of an airplane by the famous French pilot Chevillard.