A child borrows his grandmother's magnifying glass to look at a newspaper ad for Bovril, at a watch, and then at a bird. The child shows grandma what he is doing. The child looks next at grandma's eye, then at a kitten.
Social & External
Willy, the Little Grandson
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
The Giver Gives to Give is a black and white silent film starring a clown in search of a stage, an audience, a friend.
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.
A tramp cares for a boy after he's abandoned as a newborn by his mother. Later the mother has a change of heart and aches to be reunited with her son.
After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.
Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.
Adrift in the vast expanse of the ocean, a solitary boat carries three castaways—a man and two women. Stranded and devoid of any glimmer of rescue, they find solace in recounting the tales of their lives to one another. As they delve into their personal narratives, reminiscing about the circumstances that led them to this desolate predicament, they navigate through the depths of three distinct destinies. Bound by the confines of their shared space, every aspect of their existence becomes a boundary, underscoring their plight.
In 1921, we follow two women - Marie and Grete - from the same poor Viennese neighborhood, as they try to better the lives of themselves and their families during the period of Austrian postwar hyperinflation.
God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.
A gangster falls for a blind violinist, only for his mobster rivals to kidnap her.
An entire city has lost its voice. Mr. TV, the owner of the city's only television channel, is carrying out a sinister plan to control all of the city's inhabitants.
When Gregoire and Lola go on a beach holiday to the idyllic Skagen, they don't know yet that the trip will be the end of their marriage. Gregoire may be wealthy, but he is many years older and several pounds heavier than his young wife, whose beauty makes all the male holiday guests turn their necks. Baron Plessen falls in love with Lola, and she quickly becomes fond of the idea of replacing her corpulent husband with a handsome nobleman. Together, they plan to push Gregoire out of the picture. The preserved material is a fragment.
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Oscar Krug is looked upon with suspicion by his neighbors because of his German name. When the US is drawn into the war with Germany, he enlists and travels the seas with his wife, Alice Morse. During a submarine attack Alice is snatched from Krug's side by a German officer. Krug now lives to have his revenge, and when the opportunity presents itself, he will have it.
Julia Ross secures employment with a wealthy widow and goes to live at her house. Two days later, she awakens in a different house in different clothes and with a new identity.
Mary Jane tries to light the oven. When she's unsuccessful, she plays around, getting black boot polish on her face. She mugs before a mirror. Then, it's back to work. When the stove still won't light, she pours in paraffin, winks at the camera, and lights a match. Kaboom! Is there any rest for the foolish, even in the grave?
"This funny individual will make you laugh until your sides ache. He is funny in all his actions, yet when he puts on his shoes you can imagine the noise he can make when he dances an ordinary clog. The shoes referred to are made of some elastic material which enables Little Tich to bow almost to the floor without bending his legs, the spring in the shoes carrying him down and up again. He places his hat on the floor and, leaning over on the toes of his wonderful shoes, dips his head into the hat and comes up without having to move from the spot or to bend his legs. He is a comical looking sight at best, being made up to suit the part, and he will make you laugh whether you want to or not."
Produced and directed by George Albert Smith, the film shows a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel. The Kiss in the Tunnel is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. It is in fact, two films in one, hence the 2 min length. Firstly, the G.A. Smith film here for the central cheeky scene in the carriage. The train view footage however is Cecil Hepworth's work, entitled 'View From An Engine Front - Shilla Mill Tunnel', edited into two halves in order to provide a visual narrative of the train entering the tunnel before the kiss and then leaving afterwards. More information about the filming of the phantom train ride can be found searching for the Hepworth film separately.
A simple scene of two rather flamboyantly-dressed Edwardian children attempting to feed a spoonful of medicine to a sick kitten. The film is important for being one of the earliest films to cut to a close-up, then back again to the same medium shot as before.
A man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.
The movie consists solely of a saber fight. Bernhardt plays a cross-gender Hamlet, and Pierre Magnier is her fellow duelist, Laertes. A few bystanders, in Rennaissance dress, stand off to the right of the screen, and in the background, next to a painted backdrop.
In order to keep a promise he made to his wife, an old man sets off to her native village with a bird in a cage. Along the road, together with his granddaughter, he discovers new values, particularly those related to the heart.
A group of intrepid filmmakers explore the abandoned subway tunnels beneath New York City in search of the mole people.
A saloon hostess loves Ramerrez, a notorious highwayman. Sheriff Jack Rance, who loves the girl too, instigates a card game that will determine the fate of all three of them. If she wins, the girl's lover will go free; but if she loses…
A child conceived by a mute servant girl transforms from an innocent youth to a killer beast at night with uncontrollable urges.
Felice returns to his native Rione Sanità in Naples to look after his dying mother, having lived abroad for the last forty years. Here he discovers that his old friend Oreste has become a notorious crimeboss.
Diamonds are stolen only to be sold again in the international market. James Bond infiltrates a smuggling mission to find out who's guilty. The mission takes him to Las Vegas where Bond meets his archenemy Blofeld.
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
The story of three Korean outlaws in 1930s Manchuria and their dealings with the Japanese army and Chinese and Russian bandits. The Good (a bounty hunter), the Bad (a hitman), and the Weird (a thief) battle the army and the bandits in a race to use a treasure map to uncover the riches of legend.
After the death of her beloved grandmother, eight-year-old Nelly meets a strangely familiar girl her own age in the woods. Instantly forming a connection with this mysterious new friend, Nelly embarks on a fantastical journey of discovery which helps her come to terms with this newfound loss.
A once-celebrated kid detective, now 31, continues to solve the same trivial mysteries between hangovers and bouts of self-pity. Until a naive client brings him his first 'adult' case, to find out who brutally murdered her boyfriend.
When a team of techno-savvy thieves break into a high-security vault, they don't discover priceless works of art... they find a crypt unopened for 100 years.
Two con artists have spent 26 years training their only daughter to swindle, scam and steal at every turn. During a desperate and hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger into joining them, only to have their entire world turned upside down.
Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.