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This paper reconstructs levels of cinemagoing in Britain over the two decades preceding the first accepted estimates of the national audience, which were produced in 1934. It uses the receipts from the tax on entertainments, levied by British governments starting in 1916, to examine the impact of broader developments, from war to major economic downturns, and radical changes within the industry itself with the introduction of sound technology. A significant discontinuity is identified in the emergence of the talking picture, which worked to broaden and deepen support for the cinema, confirming it as the dominant mass entertainment form of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to articles on the Great Britain early motion picture industry. An 1895 interview of Thomas Blair shows that he was equally interested in the potential of celluloid roll-film for both still cameras and moving image devices. Gerry Turvey's paper explores a period of British film history when the main genre was non-fiction. John Barnes discusses the film "Mary Jane's Mishap" in 1902. Richard Brown explores the economic impetus which drove the early film industry, in relation to films of the Boer War. The restoration of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection by the British Film Institute is attributed to scholar Vanessa Toulmin's persuasive arguments for its national importance. Jon Burrows has managed to find new sources of early film history in the form of London, England's council and metropolitan police records.

This article examines the exhibition and reception of Kinemacolor in Russia from 1910 to 1916. Kinemacolor was a British method of filming and projecting in natural color invented by George Albert Smith and financed by Charles Urban, a US-born entrepreneur; film historians generally regard it as the most commercially viable color process before the outbreak of war in 1914. The article investigates Urban's interest in Russia as a potential market for Kinemacolor and as a source of interesting filmic material. In addition to identifying the extent of Kinemacolor's exhibition and distribution in Russia between 1910 and 1916, it also examines the Russian subjects filmed by Urban's companies in black and white and color, and identifies two occasions (1909 and 1913) on which Tsar Nikolai II and Tsarina Aleksandra Fedorovna were filmed in Kinemacolor. The article argues that the reception of Kinemacolor was widespread and diverse, and included members of the Russian imperial family and the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin. It references the specialist film-trade press in Britain, Russia, Europe, and North America; theater listings in Britain and Russia; and contemporary reports on Kinemacolor exhibitions in the British and Russian media. The article also draws upon the extensive archive of Urban's private papers, which is currently preserved in Bradford's National Science and Media Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to 1914, Albany Ward (1879-1956) was the operator of the largest cinema circuit in England. He had entered the film business with Birt Acres in 1896, but soon branched out on his own as a traveling exhibitor, eventually acquiring 29 theatres in the western part of England and Wales. Using materials in the collection of the Albany Ward family, this paper documents the pre-war career of one of Britain's early motion picture showmen. The article also discusses the establishment of the Ward Film Service in 1912. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at approaches to film acting in 1930s British Cinema by examining the papers of the actor Robert Donat (1905-1958), now housed in the Donat Archive in the John Rylands University Library, Manchester. Using Donat's original documents, particularly the 'The Emotion Chart', that was used in preparation for his role in The Citadel (MGM, 1938), it argues that film acting methodologies in Britain were developed from the cross-fertilisation of stage acting and existing film acting practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section reprints two rare early texts about the craft of film coloring, dating from 1898 and 1908, by Duncan Mitchell in Britain and Elizabeth Martine in the United States. Mitchell and Martine each describe the meticulous nature of their work as colorists and discuss specific techniques and aesthetic issues that they believe are important in the process of coloring films by hand. The accompanying overview article by Stephen Bottomore summarizes and analyzes the points made by this pair of colorists and compares their accounts with what existing sources tell us about early film coloring. Brief biographies of Mitchell and Martine are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first comprehensive examination of the cinema train in Britain, arguing that the history of the movie coach expands our understanding of exhibition and distribution networks in twentieth-century Britain, particularly with regard to news consumption. Using contemporary press reports, archived documents, and the newsreels shown in the carriages, this article also articulates how narratives about the nation's empire and self-projected modernity influenced the cinema train's construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "movie-struck girl" and the anxieties that this figure generated have been well documented in relation to early Hollywood. This article explores concurrent trends in Britain during the 1910s and 1920s. It examines the local publications and practices that emerged to cater to aspiring film actors. It also shows how discussions of would-be cinema stars took part in national debates about women's place in the labor market and the struggle to legitimize the domestic film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the transformation of film exhibition practices in Great Britain produced by the emergence of fixed site cinemas between the years 1906 and 1914. Some of the most important information about entrepreneurial trends, screening practices, and the character of the audiences in the penny/shop front cinema sector were analyzed. A description is given on how some attempts were made to use the Cinematograph Act as a tool for outright suppression in response to the social miseducation about large groups of immigrant spectators who attended shows in East End in London, England.

Says that all early actuality or non-fiction films in Great Britain from 1895 to 1901 were about location, whether it was the views of rural, urban, and foreign landscapes, or the sites of public spectacle, and the spaces in which significant events might occur. The author proposes to demonstrate that these films were not the naíve capturing of raw location and actuality footage, but that from the outset, early cinematography was approached with a sense of artistry and a feeling for the integrity of each particular image. The strategy has been to deduce the aesthetic system of non-fiction practice from the descriptions of the films offered in the producers' catalogues. Sharpness and clarity of image were aesthetic choices which placed early film at some distance from the avant-garde of British photography in the 1890s. Producers of non-fiction films promoted them for their value as "portraits" of dignitaries or of ordinary people.

The article explores the links between the late-Victorian stage and early film. It discusses the implications of the February 12, 1909 suicide committed by English actor C.J Warner, who became world-famous for his role in the film "Drink," for the rise of late-Victorian stage and early film. It examines the thinking and working method of film director D. W. Griffith, and reconsiders Griffith's film "A Drunkard's Reformation," which is reportedly unique among Griffith's films in having its genesis in an immediate current event which would appear to have no direct personal link with Griffith, but may relate to Griffith's earlier and continuing involvement with the New York theatrical world.

The article examines the reception of the film "The Birth of a Nation," directed by D. W. Griffith, in Great Britain during the years 1915-1916. It shows how the wartime atmosphere of the First World War affected both the publicity for and reception of the film. It looks at how the film's racist content affected British spectators, as well as audiences in the U.S. It also explores why the film was accepted by the British cinema culture at the time through a number of different interpretive strategies: as an advance in the cinematic art, as a portrayal of the personal and familial consequences of war, as educational spectacle and as evidence of a share Anglo-American historical trajectory.

The article attempts to resolve a dispute over the authorship of a number of films made in England between 1900 and 1902. It examines the debate about who really made "Grandma's Reading Glass," as well as a number of other technically advanced films attributed to either George Albert Smith and Arthur Melbourne-Cooper. It shows the inventiveness of the films that Smith made during this period. It also discusses the importance of the film "Grandma's Reading Glass" to the introduction of the concept of film editing.

This article discusses the emergence of the French New Wave in the film industry. According to the French press, New Wave refers to the novel lifestyles of 1950s French youth. It shows modern trends among U.S. and British youth. However, film critics use New Wave to designate unconventional, youth-oriented French films. Examples of these youth-oriented French films include "Et Dieu créa le femme," directed by Roger Vadim and "Les Amants," directed by Louis Malle. There have been several competing perspectives on the concept of New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The article discusses the employment of women in the British film trade during World War I. It has been estimated that there were around 200,000 people employed in cinemas across the whole country. Women in Great Britain found employment as cashiers, usherettes/attendants, film joiners and repairers and as office typists. A managing director of an unspecified cinematograph company at a Military Tribunal in Leeds, England, questioned the suitability of women as managers. He said that he had tried women as managers but they failed.

The short story "In the Dark," which originally appeared in the May 16, 1896, issue of the journal "Pick-Me-Up," by an anonymous author, is presented.

The article explores the history and progress of moving image archives. According to the author, the moving picture archives are a recent phenomenon resulting from various technological innovations that existed during the 19th century. During the mid-1890s the movies came into being. Both William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an Englishman who worked for U.S. inventor Thomas Edison, played a key role in the development of motion pictures and supported the validity and usefulness of the moving image archive. The first successful film archives were established after the U.S., Great Britain, France and Germany collaborated to form an International Federation of Film archives (FIAF).

The article discusses a cartoon, originally published in the March 27, 1901, issue of the journal "Punch," the depicts the filming of the Oxford versus Cambridge Boat Race in Long, England.