Yil 1900

A turn-of-the-last-century hand-tinted short, which features two women, Miss Lally and Miss Julyett, dancing at a ball. By the legendary French filmmaker Alice Guy.

A divinely inspired peasant woman becomes an army captain for France and then is martyred after she is captured.

A cartoonist defies reality when he draws objects that become three-dimensional after he lifts them off his sketch pad.

An early trick film where a car explodes and body parts fall from the sky. A policeman witnesses and attempts to piece the remains back together.

A machine churns out sausages on one side and spits out hats on the other.

A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair. As the cymbal player sits down, a drummer appears in the second chair, and then likewise moves on to the third chair. In this way, an entire band is soon formed, and is then ready to perform.

A series of fantastical wrestling matches.

A Japanese theatre performance based on a legend.

The entire story of Christmastide is here depicted. The scene opens in a large boudoir of an apparently wealthy man's home. His children, assisted by their governess, are about to retire. Before lying down they hang up their stockings on the edge of the bed. The picture changes and night appears. We see the housetops of the town and angels are flying about depositing packages in each of the chimneys. (Edison Catalog)

Possibly the first film to utilize the technique of focus pulling. A man kisses a beautiful and lively woman, then the image blurs and dissolves into a clear image of the man waking up to his nagging wife.

Sherlock Holmes enters his drawing room to find it being burgled, but on confronting the villain is surprised when the latter disappears.

The fairy at a cabbage patch hovers over the babies. This is a remake of Guy's 1896 film on the same subject, this time shot in 35 mm.

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.

A man takes off his clothes in preparation for bed, only for new clothes to spontaneously generate, leading to comical consternation.

George Mélies made a version of this a few years later, often titled Une Indigestion, but Guy-Blaché’s earlier film Chirurgie Fin de Siecle (1900) is more widely available. And it’s not one to watch the night before an operation. In this clinic, a sign pleads “On est prie de ne pas crier/Please do not cry”, and the doctors set about the patient with saws, cheerily hacking off limbs, and then slopping them into a bucket, all the while arguing ferociously with each other. They then reattach arms and legs from a bucket of “exchange pieces” (using glue) before re-animating their victim, I mean patient, with bellows. (from http://silentlondon.co.uk/2015/01/23/10-disgusting-moments-in-silent-cinema/)

Showing the attacking forces drawn up in line of battle. They immediately commence firing on the shore batteries. The batteries return the fire with telling effect, but are at last silenced by the overwhelming forces of the enemy. In the distance can be seen the ruins of a bridge destroyed by the invading forces. The smoke thickens as the firing becomes general, and the effect is superb.

A dancer personifying Winter, dances in the snow.

Consisting of a single shot, Spiders on a Web is one of the earliest British examples of close-up natural history photography. Made by one of the pioneers of the British film industry, G.A. Smith, this short film details spiders trapped in an enclosure, and despite the title, does not actually feature a web.

The titles tell us this film is based on an incident in the Boxer Rebellion. A man tries to defend a woman and a large house against Chinese attackers. They attack with swords, guns, and paddles. He's over-matched. What will become of the mission, its defenders, and its occupants?

A cleverly conceived picture of a little boy and girl with building blocks. The little girl has erected a pretty structure, which the boy proceeds to demolish with pokes of his fingers. When the demolition of the house is completed, the film is shown in reverse, and the little building comes back to its original form in a most marvellous manner.