Early Cinema Gateway
Moving Pictures
- American Film Institute
General site on America's "only national arts organization devoted to film, television and video", with a selection of clips from silent shorts and the AFI's much-hyped feature film discovery, Richard III (1912). It also includes the gaudy but exhaustive CineMedia guide to film links on the Net. - American Memory from the Library of Congress
Incomparable collection of early film clips from the Library of Congress, with substantial supporting information. Includes turn-of-the-century views of New York, the origins of American animation, American variety acts, views from the Spanish-American War, and the most recent addition, the Theodore Roosevelt collection (an accompanying essay, T.R. on Film, credits Charles Urban as the donor of some of these films). - Archivio del Movemento
Wide selection of pre-cinema and early cinema animations (viewable with Windows Media Player), including titles by Ottomar Anschutz, Albert Londe, Eadweard Muybridge, E-J. Marey, Lucien Bull, Georges Demeny, the Lumieres, Skladanowskys and Edison. Text in Italian. - Black Film Center/Archives
A selection of downloadable early films (QuickTime) showing black Americans, including Edison's The Pickanninies (1894) and A Morning Bath (1896). Produced by Indiana University's Department of Afro-American Studies. - 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. The films can also be accessed through the British Universities Newsreel Database and through ITN Source, which now manages the British Pathe collection. - Gaumont Pathé Archives
Database of the French Gaumont, Pathé and Éclair newsreels, from 1896, 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. - DG
Movie clips (using QuickTime) from the films of D.W. Griffith, including several examples from his American Biograph period with such classic titles as The Musketeers of Pig Alley and An Unseen Enemy. - The Early Cinema
A selection of Quick Time movie clips of films made by Biograph and Edison from the 1897-1905 period, which derive from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection. Part of an educational site produced by the Center for History and New Media. - Early Film Pioneers
Part of a film studies course from Winona university, this gives conventional information on Edison, the Lumières, Méliès, Porter and Griffith, with film clips of such titles as The Kiss, Arrival of a Train, A Trip to the Moon and The Great Train Robbery, using RealPlayer. - The Edison Film
An interesting site devoted to a beautifully hand-coloured copy of an Edison film from the 1890s, which is actually composed of three individual clips of skirt dancers, one of whom is Annabelle. - 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. - MOMI
In 1999 London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) closed, awaiting the promised construction of a new museum. Filling the gap, and making his own subtle protest, Stephen Herbert (producer of The Projection Box) has devised an unofficial on-line version of the sections of the Museum that covered pre-cinema and early cinema. Beautifully illustrated and animated, it is the first place to learn about magic lanterns, the phantasmagoria, panoramas, zoetropes, phenakistoscopes, chronophotography and the first twenty years of cinema. - Newsplayer
Commercial site, which for £25 per year, offers access to 10,000 streamed newsfilm clips from 1896 to the present day (using Windows Media Player). Most of the clips cover more recent times, and little thought has gone into the presentation of the material or explaining its provenance, but it is nevertheless a remarkable resource. - Sandow - Historic Photographs of Early Bodybuilders
This has more to do with bodybuilding than film, but Eugen Sandow was a popular figure at the end of the 19th century, who appeared in a number of the earliest films made, of which some can be viewed here. - Screenonline
Impressive online encyclopdia and moving image educational resource from the British Film Institute. Combines the history of British film and television, through a complex strucutre based around themes, personalities, tours and special features. The biographical resources include many early cinema figures (including Charles Urban), taken from The Encyclopedia of British Film and The Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Directors. Screenonline comes with a huge number of streamed video clips, which are accessbile to UK educational users only. These include a number of classic early cinema titles, and a wide range of selections from the Topical Budget newsreel. - Slapstick
Wide selection of Quicktime movie clips for silent film comedians, including Chaplin, Lloyd, Arbuckle, Langdon and Max Linder.