The Ascent of the Great Pyramid of Giza by Prince Leopold III(1923)

From 3 to 22(sh)

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.

R. F. Outcault Making a Sketch of Buster and Tige(en)

Buster Brown creater R.F. Outcault sketches his creation. Part of the Buster Brown series for Edison film studio.

Riddles of the Sphinx(en)

For over 4000 years, the Sphinx has puzzled all who have laid eyes on it. What is this crouching lion, human-headed creature? Who built it and why? To unlock its secrets, two teams of scientists and sculptors immerse themselves in the world of ancient Egypt — a land of pharaohs and pyramids, animal gods and mummies, sun worship and human sacrifice.

Danse Serpentine (In a Lion's Cage)(fr)

Madame Ondine performs a serpentine dance surrounded by big cats.

Récréation à la Martinière(fr)

Students in Lyon.

The Boxing Kangaroo(en)

The Boxing Kangaroo is an 1896 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, produced and directed by Birt Acres for exhibition on Robert W. Paul’s peep show Kinetoscopes, featuring a young boy boxing with a kangaroo. The film was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme, originally shown in a portable booth at Hull Fair by Midlands photographer George Williams, donated to the National Fairground Archive was identified as being from this film.

Oil Gush Fire in Bibiheybat(az)

The film was filmed in Bibi-Heybat, a suburb of Baku (now the capital of Azerbaijan), during a fire at the Bibi-Heybat oil field. The film was shot on 35mm film by the Lumiere brothers in 1898. On August 2 of the same year, a demonstration of Alexander Michon's program took place, which included the film "Fire at an oil fountain in Bibiheybat".

Silent Britain(en)

Long treated with indifference by critics and historians, British silent cinema has only recently undergone the reevaluation it has long deserved, revealing it to be far richer than previously acknowledged. This documentary, featuring clips from a remarkable range of films, celebrates the early years of British filmmaking and spans from such pioneers as George Albert Smith and Cecil Hepworth to such later figures as Anthony Asquith, Maurice Elvey and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock.

Little Monsters 3D(en)

Little Monsters presents some of the animal kingdom’s strangest survival strategies: poison dart frogs, chameleons, praying mantises and scorpions, to name but a few. Thanks to 3D visualization, large audiences can experience a chameleon thrusting out its tongue at close range, rattlesnakes striking at their targets to within fractions of an inch, praying mantises hunting and hummingbirds feeding, filmed from inside the flower! And with its ingenious combination of slow-motion 3D and timelapse 3D, “Little Monsters” even improves upon state of the art 3D for greater impact, yielding unbelievable scenes the world has never seen and “felt” before.

The Photographical Congress Arrives in Lyon(fr)

Down the gangway, photographers leave the deck of a riverboat in large numbers.

Bicycle(nl)

Rhythmic composition of moving photographs of cyclists in Amsterdam, ‘set’ to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The Whisper of Ziggurat: Untold Secrets of Elamite Civilization(en)

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three millennia. They created marvelous works in architecture and craftsmanship. These works of art depict the lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs of the Elamites.

Buster Keaton: The Genius Destroyed by Hollywood(fr)

In 1926, Buster Keaton was at the peak of his glory and wealth. By 1933, he had reached rock bottom. How, in the space of a few years, did this uncontested genius of silent films, go from the status of being a widely-worshipped star to an alcoholic and solitary fallen idol? With a spotlight on the 7 years during which his life changed, using extracts of Keaton’s films as magnifying mirrors, the documentary recounts the dramatic life of this creative genius and the Hollywood studios.

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau(es)

The Dangers of the Fly(es)

The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.

The Short Autumn(en)

A meditation on an Alaskan autumn.

Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss(en)

Actor and writer Mark Gatiss embarks on a chilling journey through European horror cinema, from the silent nightmares of German Expressionism in the 1920s to the Belgian lesbian vampires in the 1970s, from the black-gloved killers of Italian bloody giallo cinema to the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War, and finally reveals how Europe's turbulent 20th century forged its ground-breaking horror tradition.

Catching Trouble(en)

This short follows a day of work for an Everglades wildlife trapper catching animals for zoos around America. In this film, his assignment is to go out into the swamp with his Indian assistant and find a bobcat, two black bear cubs and six rattlesnakes.

Loïe Fuller(fr)

This is another short, simple dance number. It’s quite stunning and unusual though with a bat turning into a woman who proceeds to give us a skirt dance before disappearing into thin air. The dance is mesmerising with the skirt stunningly changing colour throughout the film.

2084: Video Clip for the Trade Unions' Reflection and Pleasure(fr)

Made for the centenary of France’s trade union laws, Chris Marker’s 2084 imagines a future in which a computer looks back on the labor movement of the 20th century. Mixing documentary reflection with speculative fiction, the film envisions contrasting paths for the future of workers and unions.