Irish Central: Century-old Irish films go from time capsule

Post by **silentfilm** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:28 pm

http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/ ... 36789.html
Century-old Irish films go from time capsule to YouTube

There’s a bit of YouTube to the 100-year-old film clips that emerged back in 1995 from barrels in English basement. They’re short, unscripted, a little rough around the edges, the stars were regular people and, in what would pass for 4G speed in 1900, they would be shot in the afternoon and screened that same evening. But unlike digital media, they weren’t supposed to live forever, given the unstable and highly flammable nature of the nitrate film stock.

Miraculously, about 800 of these slice-of-life films hibernated safely through most of the 20th century in barrels in the cellar of the Mitchell & Kenyon film company, among them several shot in Ireland.

Producing “Local Films for Local People,” Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon would shoot their “Topicals”--street scenes, sporting events, vacation spots—during the day and show them that night at traveling carnivals, fairground tents and local meeting halls. Lured by banners advertising “See Yourselves as Others See You,” people paid to see if Mitchell & Kenyon had captured them or their friends on film.

The audience appetite for “Topicals” would wane eventually and in the 1920s, Mitchell would seal the films into those time capsules. In 1995, when the building was demolished, workers found the barrels and had to good sense to drop them off at a video business on the way to the junkyard. The proprietor sent them to a local film history buff who kept collection in safekeeping until a consortium led by the British Film Institute began the slow, costly work of preserving and digitizing the images.

Most “Topicals” were shot on other side of the Irish Sea, but here are two made in Ireland, starting with a pre-auto Belfast streetscape shot in 1901 from the top of a double-decker horse-drawn tram.

According to the narrator the street is Royal Avenue. Probably the oddest little details are those pushcarts carrying advertising for a film exhibition by the North American Photo Animation Company (as Mitchell & Kenyon produced films in Ireland for that company the ads were likely for its own films). In the other, the filmmakers jostled for position to record the finals of the 1902 Cork Regatta International Cup rowing on the River Lee.

There are “Topicals” of Dublin, Wexford, Cork by tram, local dignitaries attending the Cork International Exhibition, scenic routes from Cork to Blarney Castle and footage of a Wales v. Ireland football match.

A 75-minute DVD compilation called Mitchell & Kenyon in Ireland is available in the Ireland and the UK, but I was unable to locate it for sale in the US in the NTSC TV standard used stateside. For more on Mitchell & Kenyon go to http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/mk/ (there’s also a Google Maps overlay that shows the locations of their shoots.) Though it’s scant of Irish footage, here’s an evocative “Topicals” montage of a vanished world, pulled from the barrels in Mitchell & Kenyon’s basement.

boblipton · Post by **boblipton** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:48 pm

Nitratevillain Luke McKiernan has mused on the Kalems shot in Ireland under Sidney Olcott with a link to several at his Biograph blog here:

http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/the-okalems/

Bob

missdupont · Post by **missdupont** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:19 am

The book "Electric Edwardians" is an interesting look at the pair. There's also a couple of other books as well.

barry byrne · Post by **barry byrne** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:29 am

I have a copy of this DVD which was issued by the BFI, some of the Irish material was also broadcast on TV about four / five years ago. I do not believe it is in R1 format.

To be honest, it is fairly mixed in content, perhaps the Cork and Belfast from the tram material is the most engaging, - particularly Cork city where during the early 20th century some of downtown was destroyed in the "Troubles". Relatively brief, however. The scenes of the Cork International Exhibition are interesting, but of the "carriage drawing up, men in hats descending" style.

The sports material and men leaving a factory shots, well unless you can identify a great grandfather or have a yen for men in tights, better things to watch out there.

sc1957 · Post by **sc1957** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:21 am

I love the advertising signs on wheels... ancestors of the modern electric signs that always seem to have letters missing, rearranged, or just plain misspelled.

I've been thinking about buying Milestone's Electric Edwardians. It must be the same stuff. I might only watch it once, but I'm sure I'd be fascinated.

westegg · Post by **westegg** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:51 am

Maybe it's just me, being a dog owner, but I find it poignant seeing some nameless dog or two running in the background; possibly the only time they were photographed, or certainly on film.

boblipton · Post by **boblipton** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:59 am

'Poignant' is a good word to described the Mitchell & Kenyon stuff. I like the way the people acknowledge the camera. "So, you are a movie camera and people thousands of miles away and years in the future may gaze upon us? Will they be good people? Will they wear hats?"

Then I see the news about Charlie Sheen or Snooki. Not the Chimpanzee, the subhuman.

Bob

missdupont · Post by **missdupont** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:21 am

Maybe it's just me, being a dog owner, but I find it poignant seeing some nameless dog or two running in the background; possibly the only time they were photographed, or certainly on film.

Watch any early silent, and there's almost always a dog running in and out of frame somewhere in the picture, up into the early twenties. It's especially true in comedies.

DShepFilm · Post by **DShepFilm** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:25 am

When Rene Clair paid homage to early cinema in THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT, he had dogs wandering through street scenes actually taken on studio sets.

David Shepard

boblipton · Post by **boblipton** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:47 am

DShepFilm wrote:When Rene Clair paid homage to early cinema in THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT, he had dogs wandering through street scenes actually taken on studio sets.

David Shepard

I think, David, you meant to write SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

Bob

Michel Derrien · Post by **Michel Derrien** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:10 pm

About Sidney Olcott and Ireland, a film tells this story: "Blazing the Trail", http://www.sidneyolcott.com/Blazing_trail.htm directed by Peter Flynn who managed the Irish Film Festival in Boston. His film will serve the bonus of a DVD of extant Kalem Irish films directed by Olcott. Here the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui82dobk-AU.

More informations in http://www.sidneyolcott.com

Sandy B · Post by **Sandy B** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:43 pm

Absolutely awesome!

Raymond Owen · Post by **Raymond Owen** » Fri Apr 01, 2011 9:51 am

Spectacular!

urbanora · Post by **urbanora** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:40 pm

Maybe it's just me, being a dog owner, but I find it poignant seeing some nameless dog or two running in the background; possibly the only time they were photographed, or certainly on film.

I can't resist offering up this link, which addresses the matter of stray dogs and silent films in some depth:

http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/2008/11/ ... film-dogs/

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 7:34 am

boblipton wrote:
DShepFilm wrote:When Rene Clair paid homage to early cinema in THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT, he had dogs wandering through street scenes actually taken on studio sets.

David Shepard
I think, David, you meant to write SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

Bob

No, he meant The Italian Straw Hat. Much of it is filmed in the style of the early Melies and Lumiere Bros actualities, and as David pointed out recently, a poster for the Lumiere Bros. show appears on a kiosk in one scene. Although the play it is based on was written much earlier, Clair set the movie in 1897 because that's when French cinema started, and he had a fond nostalgia for the style.

Besides on-the-set dogs, other early cinema ideas that reappear in The Italian Straw Hat include the animated furniture from the Automatic Moving Company (1910) and a strange cadre of well-dressed but threatening people that recalls Feuillade serials (both in the dream sequence), and just the nature of chase scenes with accumulating numbers of pursuers that were staples of early French movies like La Chasse aux Potirons.

There are some random dogs in the outdoor-filmed Keystone Chaplin films as well. I remember noticing one towards the beginning of Getting Acquainted. I thought "I wonder if that dog is going to come back in the plot later," but no, it was just an extra, not an actor.

Michel Derrien · Post by **Michel Derrien** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 4:31 pm

Peter Flynn has directed Blazing the Trail: the O'Kalems in Ireland. It tells the story of Sidney Olcott, a Canadian producer who directed for Kalem, 30 films or so in locations, in Ireland from 1910 to 1914.
The film will be shown in the Film Festival of Galway, the 6th of July and in Beaufort, co Killarney, the 11th of July. In the pub where Olcott put his camera many, many times.

more informations: http://www.sidneyolcott.com

David Denton · Post by **David Denton** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 8:54 pm

The Trinity College Dublin site currently has five silents streaming and for download: Rory O'More (Kalem 1911), For Ireland's Sake (Gene Gauntier 1914), Bold Emmett, Ireland's Martyr (Lubin 1915), Brennan of the Moor (Solax 1913) and Ireland A Nation (Gaelic Film Co. 1914, actually the 1920 re-issue with additional footage). Olcott directed the first three which are also viewable on the Olcott site. There may be more to follow later this year.

Irish Central: Century-old Irish films go from time capsule

Irish Central: Century-old Irish films go from time capsule

Doggies in shots

Re: Doggies in shots

Re: Doggies in shots