This selection of early films tries to recreate the spirit of programs from the period, as it mixes drama and comedy with trick films and documentaries. It also displays examples of various early colouring techniques, and opens with Le coucher de la mariée made by photographer Eugène Pirou in 1896, considered to be cinema’s first erotic film, and ends with Les flammes diaboliques (1907), an example of the visual fireworks of Segundo de Chomón. In between, we are taken to sites of ancient Egypt (Louqsor et Thèbes, 1911) and Coney Island (Bremen to New York by the Liner George Washington, 1909), as well as a fictionalized Palestine in the biblical Ruth et Boaz (1910).
The nitrate prints in the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute (source of the projection prints screened here) were identified by independent archivist, historian and researcher Camille Blot-Wellens, and were all recently photochemically preserved, most of them at the Institute’s former in-house laboratory.
Jon Wengström
Screening duration: 57 min
Curated by: Jon Wengström
FILMS
Le coucher de la mariée (France, 1896)
Short-Sighted Sammy (United Kingdom, 1905)
The Fatal Hand (United Kingdom, 1907)
Louqsor et Thebes (France, 1911)
Comment on fraude à la frontière (France, 1908)
Terreur en Russie (France, 1907)
Ruth et Boaz (France, 1910)
Bremen to New York by the Liner George Washington (United Kingdom, 1909)
Les flammes diaboliques (France, 1907)