The Telegraph: Lost film footage of Edwardian London discove

[silentfilm]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3248605 ... vered.html
(click on the link for video)
Lost film footage of Edwardian London discovered
A historian has discovered film footage of Edwardian London that includes fascinating snapshots of people going about their everyday lives.

By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:24AM BST 24 Oct 2008

The film was shot in 1904 as a 'travelogue' for Australians curious about life in what was "one of the most exciting cities anywhere", according to Professor Ian Christie.

He discovered the 12 minute reel while trawling through archives in Canberra.

Prof Christie said: "It's a rather clever mixture of what we would expect to see - such as the Embankment, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square - but it also has these wonderful close ups of individuals.

"There's an old lady sleeping rough on a bench, children encouraging a dog to swim in the Thames, children paddling in one of the ponds in St James's Park."

But some things never change.

"There's a wonderful shot of roadworks on the Strand," he said. "The catalogue says, 'Street up as usual'. Road works were obviously a common feature of London in 1904 too."

Other scenes show roads packed with horse-drawn traffic, the city "absolutely teeming with people", fish traders at Billingsgate Market and shoe-shiners in the West End.

The footage, shot of 35mm film, also shows subtle insights into life such as the way people walked, he added.

The academic, professor of film and media history at Birkbeck College in London, said the film, called Living London, was shot by pioneering Anglo-American film-maker Charles Urban.

It was a big hit in Australia with audiences who had either emigrated or had never seen the land of their forefathers.

"It wasn't easy to hop on a plane then," he said.

An advertisement for the film displayed in small-town Australia read: "Sites along a route on the most important thoroughfare in London, not merely showing street scenes but incredible 'Snapshots' of the various human types, their different occupations and pleasures."

Prof Christie said it was a "fascinating panorama of life in London at the beginning of the last century".

The fragment was probably only about a quarter of the whole film, he said.

Living London is one of 15 archive films about the capital to be shown on Friday evening (October 24).

The programme of short films, collectively titled London Loves, will be screened in Trafalgar Square at 6.30pm.

The event is part of the London Film Festival , which runs until October 30.

[urbanora]

The Daily Telegraph report comes with a video clip, as does this report (c/o Sky News) in The Times, which includes an interview with Ian Christie, who discovered the film:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 004221.ece

However, there has been some change on the factual front. Up until a day or two ago the 12-minute film was thought to be the surviving quarter of Charles Urban's Living London, made in 1904. It now seems fairly clear that is actually half of another Urban film, The Streets of London, made in 1906. It doesn't change the marvellous documentary qualities of the film, however. One clue can be seen in the Sky/Times clip itself - a row of sandwich-board men advertising Urbanora film shows, one of which is A Voyage to New York, a film that wasn't released until four months after Living London...