Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

ical films followed. Some of the first surgical films had people averting
their eyes. We also showed A.C. Haddon’s 1898 ethnographic films of
the Torres Strait islanders with songs from the cylinders Haddon
recorded on the same field trip. The two did not and were not meant to
synchronise but it is known that Haddon did present his films in this
fashion in 1906, if not before. The final section, presented by pre-cinema
expert Stephen Herbert, was designed to confuse. We showed animated
pre-cinema images of Muybridge, Marey, Demenÿ, Le Prince and others,
asking the audience just what was meant by moving images and where it
could be said to have all begun. A final coup and tease was to show
moving images taken by William Friese-Greene; a man commonly dismissed
as a charlatan who achieved nothing and yet here (albeit animated
by modern technology) were scenes taken by him of the King’s
Road, London, in 1890. On this provocative note our season concluded.
Victorian films were never meant to be shown in 90 minute or longer
programmes, of course. Twenty minutes was more than enough in 1896.
To present such programmes it is necessary to put a lot of thought into
structure and variety, as well as supplying the audience with useful information,
but not too much of it, and being prepared to make mistakes,
stand corrected, and face every sort of question under the sun. If a question
was a little too technical or arcane, there was usually someone else
in the audience who could answer it, but the lecturers were sometimes
floored by detailed enquiries about electric trams, or impossible ones
about what sort of hats people liked to wear in the 1890s. The NFTVA is
trying to develop this notion of ‘public cataloguing’, where the audience
is invited to identify titles, locations or other aspects of films. Such
answers naturally have to be treated with caution, but opening out the
collection in this way and encouraging people to contribute to our
knowledge of these films has to be a good thing.
Anecdotes and jokes are essential in such shows; one soon learns the
Victorian lecturer’s trick of talking to the subjects on the screen and bidding
them perform some action just before they in fact do so.
Informative programme notes also have to be prepared (a complete filmography
was made available after the eighth programme); there was a
foyer exhibition of stills, and there was the book Who’s Who of Victorian
Cinema to promote [*]. And there are the private battles and jealousies
and miscomprehension inevitable in such an ambitious undertaking. But
we showed over 700 film titles, got good audiences (several people loyally
attended all eight), and managed most of the time to entertain and
maybe instruct a little. Much thanks are due to those named above, to
Bryony Dixon, Elaine Burrows, Jo Paine and many others. The Victorian
film pioneers built the foundations of that film world which we now
hold so dear. Hopefully it was an appropriate thank you to them all.
[*] Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: a Worldwide Survey, edited by Stephen Herbert
and Luke McKernan, is available from BFI Publishing, 21 Stephen Street,
London W1P 2LN, Great Britain; price £42.00 inc. p & p.
68 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996