1896 Movies

Young boys going into the sea water by Brighton's West Pier in the UK to pick up pennies thrown in by people on the pier.

Some men are playing a game on the beach, while some ladies with their backs to the cameras watch. A donkey cart ambles by.

"No Longer Alone". Parody of "Finally Alone".

On a makeshift stage three pairs face-to-face in peasant clothes are dancing Minho's traditional step dance. The clothes are more close to Santarém folklore than the northern province of Minho.

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 unti...

Fire brigade turnout in Berlin.

A street scene in Rome from the Lumière Brothers.

The short film Une allée du bois de Vincennes from 23 June 1896 (France)

Shot with the Cinématographe Joly-Normandin

A soldier is talking to a woman while sitting on a bench, a man sits on it, and the soldier stands up, causing the bench to tip over and the man falls. Available in flipbook format only (tentatively identified) and otherwise a lost film.

Early short film

An actuality film of an unknown location showing people and traffic moving slowly round each other in a city centre.

Shot in the summer of 1896 in Paris

Top-hatted pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic pass over Blackfriars Bridge in London.

Skladanowsky Brothers, the inventors of the "Living Photographs"

Street scenes released by Gaumont and filmed on equipment made by Georges Demenÿ. (On view at BFI Mediatheque).

Part of a series of military views produced by Eugène Pirou

The film shows the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and is one of the earliest documentary recordings of the city.