Brian Coe 1930-2007 (November 2007)

It is sad to have to report the death last month of Brian Coe, one of the original contributors to the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema book. Brian was Curator of the Kodak Museum 1969-1984, then Curator at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, before joining the Museum of the Moving Image in 1989 as its special events co-ordinator. He instituted several important exhibitions on photography and cinematography, and his many publications in the field have remained standard works. In particular his The History of Movie Photography is the indispensible guide to its subject, not least for its devotion of nineteenth-century optical toys, chronophotography, Victorian and early cinema technologies. He was a kindly, knowledgeable and gregarious man. He will be much missed.

Films of the Holy Lands in 1897 (October 2007)

An astonishing discovery was unveiled at the 2007 Giornate del Cinema Muto, held in Pordenone, Italy. Ninety-three films taken in Palestine, Egypt and Turkey in 1897 (or possibly a little later) were discovered in an antique shop in March 2007 by Lobster Films of Paris, and were exhibited for the first time to the festival. The films, all from negatives, look superb. They are a combination of actualities, showing street and rural scenes, and scenes from what appear to be two childhoods of Christ, one evidently filmed in the 'Holy Lands', the other possibly in France. Much further investigation is required, but it seems likely that the films are those made by Léar, or Albert Kirchner, who is known to have filmed in Palestine and Egypt at this time, and who made a popular Life of Christ.

Patentee of Zoetrope revealed (October 2007)

The first patentee of the Zoetrope, and the person who gave it its name, was William E. Lincoln (1847-19??). First marketed by the Milton Bradley toy and games company, the drum-form Zoetrope was the most popular form of moving image device in Victorian times, after the initial success of the Phenakistiscope spinning disc toy, and before the emergence of the photographic motion picture film industry. No photograph of Lincoln was known to exist until the photograph reproduced left, showing William E. Lincoln when he was seventy-four, surfaced recently. More information on Lincoln will be published on the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema site in due course.

Screen Heritage Survey (September 2007)

From 24 September, the UK Screen Heritage Network is organising an online survey of UK museums and other collections which hold artefacts associated with the moving image and other screen-related entertainments. The Screen Heritage Network is a group of museums, archives, media producers, broadcasters and academic institutions that has come together under the auspices of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to advance the concept of screen heritage and encourage its preservation and promote wider access. Its interpretation of screen heritage encompasses the magic lantern and optical toys, as well as all aspects of cinema and television production, and on to the video games and handheld technologies of today. The survey runs until the end of November, and the information gathered will be used to create the first-ever directory of collections of moving image and screen-related artefacts in the UK.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (August 2007)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a children's novel by Brian Selznick, designed for the 9-12 age group. It is a historical mystery story, set in Paris in the early 1930s, in a mixture of text and graphics meant to imitate silent movie-style. A leading figure in the story is Georges Méliès, who runs a toy store as he did in reality towards the end of his life, whose fortune becomes intertwined with that of the boy hero, Hugo. The book was first published in the USA in January 2007. The book has generated a lot of interest, and it is rumoured that Martin Scorsese is considering making a film of it. The book can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. The book also has a website, with background information on Méliès, at www.theinventionofhugocabret.com.

Queen Victoria comes to Canterbury (July 2007)

The Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee show is featuring at this year's Canterbury Festival. The show is a recreation of Queen Victoria's tour around London on 22 June 1897, to mark sixty years of her reign. The event was filmed by many motion picture camera operators dotted along the route, and the show (already seen in London and Nottingham) takes the audience around the route with a combination of films, photographs, music and actors reading eye-witness testimony from figures such as Mark Twain and Edward Burne-Jones. The show is presented by Luke McKernan, with Neil Brand and Mo Heard reading the eye-witness accounts and Stephen Horne playing the piano. Priority booking for the festival is now open, with general public booking for 13 August. The show takes place at the International Study Centre, next to Canterbury Cathedral, on 19 October. Further details here.

When the Movies Began... (June 2007)

The latest feature to be added to the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema web site is When the Movies Began. This is a chronology of the world's film productions and film shows before May 1896. It was originally compiled by Stephen Herbert and published as a booklet by The Projection Box in 1994. This updated and redesigned version incorporates new research, in particular the work of Deac Rossell, and it will be regularly revised and updated. There is also a full introduction and list of references. Any comments and corrections are welcome. When the Movies Began is included within the Features section of this web site.

Nineteen (Obscure) Frames that Changed the World (May 2007)

In October 1888 the French born inventor Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince recorded what is thought to be the first film in the history of cinema. His subject was Leeds Bridge – the ebb and flow of humanity – people going about their daily business unaware that their motions were being inscribed into history. The surviving frames of this footage are owned by the National Media Museum in Bradford where Curator of Cinematography, Michael Harvey, has been working with New York video artist Ken Jacobs for 18 months to provide footage for the unique exhibition Nineteen (Obscure) Frames That Changed the World. "Ken Jacobs probes the magnitude and infinity of the existing frames, using a unique 3D projection system (with 3d glasses) to reveal hidden beauty and unlock great waves of motion. Ken Jacobs’ films, performances and installations inspire a sense of awe and mystery that audiences must have felt when confronted by moving images at the very start of cinema." The exhibition opens on Thursday 24 May and runs from 25 May–1 June, 11.30am–6.30pm with free entry. Further information here.

Projection Box Awards (May 2007)

Early film and pre-cinema publishers The Projection Box have announced a new award for essays on projected and moving images to 1915. The aims of this award are to encourage new research and new thinking into any historical, artistic or technical aspect of projected and moving images up to 1915; and to promote engaging, accessible, and imaginative work. The first prize of £250 is for an essay of between 5,000 and 8,000 words (including notes). The deadline for entries is 18 January 2008. The winning essay will also be published in an issue of Early Popular Visual Culture (Routledge). At the discretion of the judges, two runners-up will each receive books and CD-Roms of their choice (published by The Projection Box), to the value of £100. Further details from www.pbawards.co.uk.

Who's Who of Victorian Cinema news feed (May 2007)

Who's Who of Victorian Cinema now features an RSS news feed. The feed will provide you with all of the news on Victorian cinema (the era of motion pictures 1871-1901) as it is published on this website. To subscribe to the feed, just click on the RSS XML icon at the top of this page or add our web address - http://www.victorian-cinema.net - to a suitable news reader (if you are new to using RSS, you can find out more from the BBC news site, which also gives some names of the free news readers that you can download).

The Man Who Stopped Time (May 2007)

His centenary may have passed three years ago, but interest in 'the father of motion pictures' continues unabated, and a new 'popular science' book on Eadweard Muybridge has just been published. Brian Clegg's The Man Who Stopped Time: The Illuminating Story of Eadweard Muybridge, Father of the Motion Picture, Pioneer of Photography, Murderer emphasizes the more dramatic aspects of Muybridge's life, but also provides a good, popular and up-to-date account for the general reader for a history which never fails to fascinate. There a positive review by Stephen Herbert on his Eadweard Muybridge site, or see the author's own account via the Popular Science website. The book can be ordered via Amazon.co.uk, here.

The first edited motion picture? (April 2007)

It now seems confirmed that there was a screening of some newly-produced Zoopraxiscope glass plates in San Francisco in the Spring of 1881, one of which features sequential actions: perhaps the first 'edited' motion picture informed by the camera - meticulously painted images based closely on photographic sequences to create a succession of different 'shots'; and for dramatic effect. A May 1881 report in the San Francisco Post described this as: "a deerhunt, where a deer, followed successfully [successively?] by dogs and horsemen, traverses over the illuminated screen". The report says these new subjects "can now be illustrated". Stephen Herbert thinks it is reasonable to suppose they were all shown at this time, though it is just possible that the report is taken from a written submission by Eadweard Muybridge. But even if it was, it is quite likely that he started using them in his shows. Most of the subjects described in the report survive, including the little-known 'three-shot' motion picture Deerhunt. More details can be found on the Eadweard Muybridge Chronology (1881, May 16 entry).

Eadweard Muybridge chronology (April 2007)

Stephen Herbert has published an online chronology to the the life and work of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). It covers events in his life, and his whereabouts; Muybridge's published photographs, books, articles, and letters; Muybridge's unpublished correspondence; correspondence (by others) that mentions Muybridge, where this is useful; books, articles, newspaper reports, advertisements, published during Muybridge's lifetime, that refer to his life or work. The chronology is still being developed, corrected, and expanded. It is available at http://www.stephenherbert.co.uk/muybchronPAGE.htm.

Victorians in Motion (February 2007)

VISAWUS, the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States is holding its annual meeting 25-27 October 2007 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. The theme of the meeting this year is "Victorians in Motion", and there is a call for papers whose broad range of topics includes not just travel and transportation but "vicarious motion: moving panoramas and other technologies that simulated travel", "representing mobility" and "performative motion", each of which seem to offer promise to someone interested in the motion picture in all its many forms in the nineteenth century. Proposals are invited for twenty-minute papers, deadline 8 May 2007.

Alfred West catalogue online (February 2007)

The 1912 catalogue of the naval filmmaker and photographer Alfred J. West, A Synopsis of the Life-Work of Alfred West, has been published online in PDF format by the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. West was the man behind ‘Our Navy’ and ‘Our Army’, hugely popular multi-media shows comprising films, photographs, songs and dramas. West was active as a filmmaker from 1897-1912, based at Southsea, Hampshire. The original catalogue is held in the British Library. The catalogue can be downloaded from www.hants.gov.uk/record-office/film/west.html.

The Bioscope (February 2007)

The Bioscope is a new information resource for early and silent cinema, in blog format. The Bioscope aims to keep you up-to-date on news, information, events, documents, publications, discoveries and anything else on early and silent cinema (which include the 'pre-cinema' and Victorian cinema fields). Contributions are supplied by invited registered users only (though anyone can add comments to the posts), but access may be widened eventually. The web address is http://bioscopic.wordpress.com, where those with appropriate news readers can subscribe to the RSS news feed.