The Story of Victorian Film

Bryony Dixon is curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive. She is the author of 100 Silent Films (BFI Screen Guides, 2011) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on silent cinema and archiving. She is co-director of the British Silent Film Festival and has programmed films for many international festivals. She has been lead curator on a number of the BFI's recent film restorations, including Underground (1928), Shooting Stars (1927), Epic of Everest (1924), The Great White Silence (1924), all nine surviving Hitchcock silent films and the BFI's large format Victorian films.

In this vivid and accessible new account of the dawn of film in Britain, internationally respected film historian and curator Bryony Dixon introduces us to Britain's first cinematic pioneers - an eclectic mix of chemists, engineers, photography enthusiasts, fairground showmen and magicians - who in a few short years built a vibrant new industry. As she chronicles the emergence of the first embryonic film forms and genres, she reveals often surprising innovations, from cutting-edge science to ingeniously witty tricks and comedies, with filmmakers reflecting existing entertainment forms as well as advancing editing and cinematography in ways that shaped the art of film for many decades after.Dixon offers fresh insights by focusing on the films themselves - many of them only recently available to view - while building on the work of generations of scholars. In the process, Dixon makes a compelling case for the British filmmakers of the era as inventive and creative figures, every bit as influential as their more celebrated contemporaries in France and the US.

The restoration of early and silent archive film has proved hugely popular as a way of bringing the past to vivid life, with examples such as Peter Jackson's film They Shall Not Grow Old, which uses archive film from the Imperial War Museum

ForewordPart One: The Victorian WorldActualities and TopicalsClose Ups:The Launch of HMS Albion (1898)The Arrest of Goudie (1901)Actualities and NewsClose Ups:Biograph's Grand National Mar 24th 1900 (lost film)Street LifeClose Ups:Children Dancing to a Barrel Organ (1898)Launch of the Worthing Lifeboat (1898)Artistic/AestheticClose Ups:Sea Cave in LisbonNatural History and ScienceClose Ups:Spider on a Web (1900)Panoramas and Phantom RidesClose Ups:Panorama of the Paris Exhibition (1900)Travel and industryClose-upsFeeding the Pigeons in St Mark's Square, Venice (1898)Local filmpClose-upsThe factory gate films of M&KWar and militaryClose-upsBattle of Spion Kop: Ambulance Corps Crossing the Tugela River (1900)Part 2: The Victorian MindComic sketches and facialsClose-upsThe Big Swallow (1901)Variety acts and noveltiesClose-upsKitty Mahone (1900)Promotional filmsClose-upsMr Moon (1900)Erotic filmsClose-upsUndressing Extraordinary (1901)Trick and children's filmClose-upsSanta Claus (1898)Drama and AdaptationClose-upsThe Death of Poor Joe (1900)Epilogue: A Victorian Crystal Ball