NICE MOVES – BRITISH FILM IN 1900
Four themes link this programme of British films from the year 1900, each celebrating a type of movement. Joe Rosenthal’s globe-trotting from England to South Africa to the Far East in search of a news story, the cyclical descriptions of random bodies – gymnasts, spiders, traction engines and the moon –, the in/out motion of waves sometimes with great violence and a series of explosions. Films from 1900 are still mostly single scenes or comprised of a very few shots, but this apparent simplicity can obscure how difficult it sometimes was to make them. Here are examples of clever trickwork, inventive use of models, patient observation, expert spider wrangling and very good organisation. There are few things as difficult to film as a total eclipse of the sun, but here we present for your delectation the first ever surviving eclipse film by magician Nevil Maskelyne Jr. filmed in North Carolina on 29 May, showing the corona and the famed Baily’s beads or the ‘diamond ring’ effect. These films have all been newly digitised from the best film sources as part of the BFI National Archive’s Victorian Project covering all the surviving British films from the 1895 to 1901. Some will be familiar but are shown here in better quality and a few will be new to the festival audiences.

Bryony Dixon