Man with a Movie Camera

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

1929-05-12 | ru

A Day with the Gipsies

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

1922-01-01 | en

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

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.

1927-09-23 | de

Days of Thrills and Laughter

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

1961-03-21 | en

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

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.

2007-09-02 | en

Finlandia

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

1922-10-21 | fi

Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

2007-12-31 | en

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

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

1888-10-15 | xx

La remise des décorations

1903-04-15 | fr

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau

2002-11-26 | es

Nanook of the North

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.

1922-06-11 | en

Censored!

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

1999-12-31 | en

À propos de Nice

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

1930-05-28 | fr

Passage of Venus

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.

1874-12-09 | fr

Sperduti nel buio

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

2014-04-09 | it

Encierro de toros

1898-01-30 | es

Budapest : cortège du sceptre royal

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.

1896-06-09 | fr

A Total Accident

Showing the entire catastrophe resulting from the attempt of Mr. Gorham to ride around the loop the loop on a bicycle. While the enormous crowd watches him he comes down the slide with the speed of the wind, circles the loop, but as he nears the bottom his wheel swerves from the path and the rider crashes into the framework of the structure. Attendants rush up and carry away the injured man. (Biograph Catalog)

1903-07-31 | en

The History of the Civil War

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

1921-06-01 | ru

Häxan

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

1922-09-18 | sv