Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (2006)

Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (2006).

A few years ago in Blackburn, England, someone opened a number of sealed containers in an old photographer's shop and discovered the original camera negatives to eight hundred short films made almost a century before. The collection found its way to the British Film Institute for cataloguing and archiving. The Mitchell & Kenyon Company was a touring motion picture studio at a time before there were venues especially built for the showing of motion pictures. It operated between 1901 and 1913.

Like earlier touring lantern slide companies, the enterprising pair would show up with their cameras in a northern English, Scottish or Welsh town a few days before a major holiday or a local fair. They'd arrange to film their one take wonder movies at parades or other pre ordained events, or create their own event by filming the students of a school or arranging a public attraction in the city streets. Sometimes they'd stumble across a real event, like a function attended by Lord Baden Powell (the founder of the Boy Scouts) or a celebration for a hero in the "Anglo Boer War." Two or three days after the filming, their publicity man would announce that new motion pictures of these local events would be displayed in tent shows or public halls. Filming a children's school almost guaranteed that every parent would buy tickets for the whole family.

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