Early Cinema Gateway
Companies and Studios
- Biograph
Rather oddly, a site from a modern business which states that it has revived the American Biograph Company. It makes various dubious assertions and has numerous errors in its supposed historical account. - British Pathe
British Pathe are the owners of the newsreel library of Pathe Gazette and Pathe News, a collection which stretches from 1896 to 1970, though the newsreel itself began in 1910. All 3,500 hours of the main Pathe library are now available as free low resolution downloads, thanks to money from the New Opportunities Fund. There are many titles for the pre-1914 period, including some rogue fiction items. It is an unparalleled online resource. (note - British Pathe is now owned by ITN Source) - Elmbridge Museum
Museum site which has a feature on local Walton-on-Thames film company the Hepworth Manufacturing Company, run by Cecil Hepworth. - Gaumont Pathé Archives
Database of the French Gaumont, Pathé and Éclair newsreels, from 1900 to 1974, searchable by keyword and date. It has large number of streamed video copies of the newsreels, of excellent quality. Catalogue text in French and English, the latter somewhat quaintly translated. - Haydon and Urry Ltd
Haydon and Urry were producers of automatic machines who briefly branched out into film projectors and film production in Britain in the 1890s. This site provides short but carefully researched information on the company, with illustrations of its Eragraph projector and some original advertisements, plus a filmography. - Hepworthfilm.org
Wide-ranging site devoted to the British film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, the Hepworth film companies and their star performers. - Hollywood Studio Tour
The current fate of many Hollywood studios of the past, including those of Lubin, Jesse L. Lasky and Charlie Chaplin, all illustrated. - Institut Lumière
The Institut Lumière in Lyon protects the heritage of the photographic manufacturers and pioneer filmmakers the Lumière family. The site contains general information on Auguste and Louis Lumière, the Cinématographe and its films, and information including beautiful reproductions of their Autochrome still photography. In French, with English version under construction. - Inventing Entertainment
Typically superb resource from the Library of Congress, presenting some of the surviving products of Edison's entertainment inventions and industries. There are 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles, as well a biographical page. Part of the incomparable American Memory site. - Limelight
A very thorough and informative site on the Limelight Department of the Salvation Army in Australia, which in the 1890s and 1900s incorporated films into its public presentations, most famously with the spectacular multimedia show Soldiers of the Cross (1900). There is much sound information on its activities, leading personalities, and the cinematographic equipment they used, including the Warwick Bioscope camera supplied by Urban. The only drawback is the length of time each page takes to download. - The London Project
A database of film businesses and cinemas in London before the First World War has been published by the AHRC Centre for British Film and Television Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Its year-long 'London Project' investigated the nature of the film business in London 1894-1914 and the main output of the research is a database, which includes a map of London boroughs linked to database results. There are several businesses associated with Charles Urban. - Lubin
Well-illustrated site devoted to American movie pioneer Siegmund Lubin. - Lumière et le Japon
Accompanying a touring exhibition of films shot in Japan in the 1890s by the Lumière cameramen François-Constant Girel and Gabriel Veyre, this comprises an excellent essay on the first films and filmmaking in Japan by Hiroshi Komatsu, including local production by Katsutaro Inabata, Einosuke Yokota and others, and filmographies. In French, with redundant colour illustrations. - Streifzüge Durch die Berliner Film- und Kinogeschichte
The early years of German cinema, as seen through the cinemas of Berlin (addresses and photographs then and now are given), covering the German pioneers Max Skladanowsky and Oskar Messter, as well as the stars and directors of the later German silents. In German. - Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc.
Thanhouser was a middling American film company of the early cinema period, specialising in theatrical adaptations. General historical and biographical details, plus information on videos and publications available. - Thomas A. Edison Papers
The Edison papers 1850-1898 have recently been made available on-line, many of them viewable as images. They include documents of the roots of the American film business, including the development of the Kinetoscope under W.K-L. Dickson, and Edison's commercial dealings with Maguire & Baucus and the Continental Commerce Company, employers of Charles Urban. Thorough identifications and indexing, a model of how to present documents on the Net, a superb resource all round. - Urbanography
The first issue of this internet journal has an article by Irvin Leigh Matus called "Where the Dream was Made" which is a genial history of the Brooklyn-based Vitagraph Company of America, one of the major production companies of the pre-1914 era, whose owners J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith were close business associates of Urban.