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MARIO SLUGAN: My name is Mario Slugan. I'm a lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London, and one of my areas of specialities is early cinema. Hopefully, I'll say a few words about that.

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I'm also a book editor-- book reviews editor for a journal Early Popular Visual Culture, which focuses on the period from approximately 19th century to 1930s.

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And I'm also the author of Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema. It's a monograph which looks at how, let's say, people around 1900s understood these categories of fiction

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and non-fiction that we kind of take for granted today but seem to have been all over the place at the time, if I'm to be believed. And also, I recently co-edited with Professor Daniel

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Biltereyst an edited volume titled New Perspectives on Early Cinema History. I would say it's really three important things, here. It's their status as cultural heritage.

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The second one would be their status as kind of a historical evidence. And the third one would be well, of course, their kind of film historical value.

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So going in sequence, when you think about these things as cultural heritage, these are products of a certain society, of a certain era. Much like pottery, let's say, in bygone times.

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Or much like tapestry, I don't know, from mediaeval Europe. But unlike these things, although they are material, they were really ephemeral. You could see them maybe once or twice in your local cinema,

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maybe if you went to a neighbouring town again. But really after you've seen them once, that would have been effectively 820 years ago. And for the last at least a century,

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these things would have been if not lost-- because most of the things are lost-- if not lost, they would have really been to be found in the archives.

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Only specialists would have access to these things. And now you get something as this kind of a cultural heritage object that you can rewatch, rewatch, rewatch at your leisure that, essentially, it's

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at your fingertips. The second point it's their status as kind of an evidence of this bygone era. Now, I can talk about it in more detail when we discuss the,

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let's say, this kind of historical value. But what you can immediately see from these things, what these things immediately give you, is essentially a kind of a visual access to how

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things were 120 years ago. You can literally see what people wore when they went out and about when they went to the factory.

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You can see also how places look like 120 years ago. Let's say Oxford Circus or something like that, something which might look quite different today. And perhaps even most interestingly,

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you can see the people's reactions to this new medium. You can see how gleeful, how enthused they are, or how just like dumbstruck they are when they see this camera pointed at them.

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You can literally see you see it in their faces how curious this thing, how attractive this thing is. And in terms of film history, there is both a kind of an international

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and a national element to this. Internationally speaking, it is undeniably the case that it's the French production companies like Lumier, Melies, Pathe Freres who were the dominant producers of this,

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let's say, first 10 years of cinema that we're looking at here. But this is not to say that there are not other kind of national industry.

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It might be a difficult term to say, but industries are different at different places. And UK being one of those, and UK presenting a quite strong production.

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And this is, let's say, a window to see how these other producers did their work. And also on the local level, for instance, and here specifically talking about the Mitchell and Kenyon

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collection, we have essentially works which we did not even know it-- well, we knew they existed, but we had no access to them until approximately mid 1990s, where you get--

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where there like a bunch of these, hundreds of these, films that was actually found in a basement. And then 10 years later, finally they are restored,

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and you get to an opportunity to essentially rewrite local and both national film history by plucking out these kind of producers who were thought to be minor players. And it turns out that they're really kind of major producers

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at the time going from town to town, and recording these films, and then essentially showing them to these very people in the street, and getting those very kind of enthused reactions

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both in the street and then both in the cinema later in the day. Well, I mean there are a couple of ways of thinking about this. One way is to treat them as essentially historical objects, as objects which kind of allow you to glean into the past.

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And another way is to think about them as films, as kind of objects to be considered within the history of film style, for instance. Or simply as aesthetic objects in their own right,

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even if you don't care what kind of overall, let's say, film stylistic context might be. But if you kind of focus on the, let's say, the evidentiary status of these films,

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we might be interested in, as I mentioned earlier, simply in this kind of, let's say, the visual perception of how things look like. But far more importantly, for instance, we really

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get an opportunity to get a kind of a handle on this kind of nexus of social relations, which in the end is the thing that makes up the world. So just to be a bit of, let's say, simplifying things a bit,

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we could divide these things into nice and nasty. So if you were to be interested into kind of a history of nice things, then you might want to take a look at,

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for instance, how these films allow you to see how people spend their leisure time, you know? Where did they go on Sunday to take a walk on a promenade? Where did they go in the evening to entertain themselves, to do,

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I don't know, local show, local theatre, local vaudeville hall, or something like that. We also might want to take a look what their sports interests were.

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Were they playing cricket, football? Were they're watching these things? We also might simply take a look at how specific locales look like 120 years ago.

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Trafalgar square, and Ironworks in Leeds, specific factories. And now we are, I guess, sliding slowly into this a bit nastier stuff, where we might want to be interested in seeing what were the working

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conditions at the time. You know, how did the-- how did the life perhaps in a factory, in a bakery, in Lord's Manor look like?

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What were the kind of means of living? How did you get your wage at the time? And then slowly kind of also trying to think about the images in terms of so

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what are they doing, in fact, for these people? If, for instance, in this kind of a grand scale of things, they are by no means elite. But are obviously got the kind of, let's say,

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the short end of the stick in terms of, let's say, how the resources are divided. You could also argue that what these a lot of these images do is that they also establish a sort of, let's say,

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second hand-- well, like a second place prize where what is built here is a certain, let's say, idea that they as well participate in this kind of, well, let's call it an imperial project,

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where although-- clearly, locally, they might not have won anything. But they are given this impression that in international global terms,

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they are the elite who are ruling over essentially what is a quarter of the landmass at the time and quarter of the population. And how is this provided?

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Well, through these images of colonialists, colonised peoples from India, from South Africa, from the Americas. Another way is through these kind

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of images of quote unquote "heroes" returning from the Boer wars, from all of these military campaigns, Transvaal during the Boer War again. And perhaps most dominantly, perhaps the best example

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of, let's say, collaboration in this, let's say, imperial colonial project is these images of the royalty, where we get this the Diamond Jubilee from 1897.

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Not much-- not that different from the one we had a few weeks ago. And also, for instance, the coronation of King Edward in 1902.

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So essentially, these you could also think about this, let's call it, circulation of images, which both allow the local population to see themselves as a sort of imperial elite

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while at the same time, you know, conceding that within the nation there are clearly differences. I was given an opportunity to decide which, let's say, specific film from the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection

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I would like to say a few more words. And it really seemed to me among these films that were kind of circulated the workers leaving the Ironworks in Leeds really kind of caught my attention.

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Most probably because of these really moments of, let's say, both rapture and rupture. You know, you have these throngs of workers kind of walking towards the camera.

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Most of them, even despite what must have been like probably 12 hour work day, are coming quite cheerful towards the camera, which seems to be the kind of best, let's say, articulation of this notion that is usually

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often discussed in early cinema, this notion of cinema of attractions. So essentially, this is the idea that the division between-- that it's not-- that the division between fiction

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and nonfiction might not be the most helpful division to talk about early cinema. But rather, something more helpful would be to think about this tool,

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let's say, not so much opposing but complementary poles of cinema of attractions on the one hand and cinema of narration on the other hand. Whereas this narrative cinema is something

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that we're all familiar with when we go to the cinema. It's about characters. It's about storylines. It's about building story worlds.

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This really is about short instances of pure pleasure. Now, this pure pleasure can be in terms of simply movement, which would have been a novelty at that time.

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It could be about the technological apparatus itself, which again would be a novelty. And as you can see, is this probably people who wouldn't have been that familiar with the technology

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at the time are now faced with some person, you know, cranking a camera in front of them. And they're asked to walk towards this, and you can see-- it's mostly children through--

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but you can see even in the adults this kind of enthused looks of, oh my God. This is something really interesting. This is something really new.

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And with the kids it's simply as though they've seen the world's biggest diamond that they can't avert their gaze to such an extent. And again, it's something clearly you--

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it's difficult to describe this thing in terms of some kind of a storyline. Well, yes, of course you can say, people exiting the factory.

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But what is really important is this kind of look at the camera, something that you generally try to avoid in narrative cinema of later days and even to this very date.

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But this is this kind of really, let's say, kind of in-your-face experience where neither the cameraman nor the person in front of this camera are afraid of simply gazing at each other

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and enjoying the whole process. I mean of course, these things are not spontaneous affairs of course. You know, you can't really see it in this film.

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There are other films, for instance, where you literally have people corralling the workers out. And there you can see that the people are not that-- in a sense, you can see a lot of times

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where the people are not as happy as being corralled in this particular case. In the Ironworks, it seems that whoever is doing corralling has managed to do it in a far more subtle fashion.

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He is-- it would have probably been a he-- they are not in the shot, or at least I wasn't able to distinguish capture them. But people clearly probably have better things

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to do after a long day's work. But even if that were the case, you can still kind of, well, really feel the excitement there. Even after the hard day's work, these people--

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even though they are corralled, and even they're definitely not being paid for anything, they are still pretty kind of excited about the fact because what were they-- probably what they were told

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is that if you come later in the day, to your local cinema, there is a good chance you might see yourself on the film. So this is how Mitchell and Kenyon essentially operated. They would go from town to town.

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In, let's say, morning, afternoon, they would shoot the local people. And at the same time, they would advertise that then these films would be seen in your local--

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well, it will be a cinema, but it would be some kind of a venue where, among other things, films would be screened. And this was really interesting, really a unique opportunity.

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Because even to this very day, we all see ourselves on Instagrams, Facebooks, on our selfies. But even today, you don't really-- it's not that common that you can just walk into the cinema

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and then expect to see your face at this big screen. So that would have definitely been a huge draw at the time, yeah. Yes.

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On the one level, it would be kind of a-- well the motto was local films for the local people, essentially. So that was definitely one of the main draws

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that within the local town you would have the opportunity to see yourself, or maybe you see your relatives, your friends. There were examples when people were going off

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to America with the boats, and then they were recorded, and then for their kind of relative they could see this trip in the evening how they embarked to the new continent.

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But of course, there was also something to be said about the value outside of this kind of immediate locations. Because, again, you could get to see

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how the Ironworks in your neighbouring town look like, how the particular, let's say, square look like. It was all sort of, let's call it, virtual tourism, let's say. That you would be able to see, for instance,

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how London looks like, how Leeds looks like, if you were, let's say, living in a neighbouring village but do not have so many opportunities to visit by yourself.

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So this is really something special. And although it might be a bit difficult to figure out at the beginning what's going on, because what-- there is this person seems to be quite

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animated, a bit aggressive. It's not quite clear against who this aggression is directed at, who is really being-- who is annoying him?

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But if you, for instance, read the catalogue that would have been available at the time, you'll see that the person is unlike the people in the Ironworks film that this person is

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very annoyed by the fact that somebody is recording him. And in fact, he is so much annoyed that he turns aggressive towards this camera fiend, as he refers to him.

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And as the shot kind of continues in really a remarkable exhibition of keeping the focus pretty clear, this person essentially approaches

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into a close up so much so that his whole mouth is in the closeup. And then, bam. We get this kind of image of the cameraman and his apparatus

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being devoured and falling into this blank space of nothingness, well, or the person's mouth. And then in the next instance, we get, again, a kind of a close up retreating.

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And we see this delightful face of Sam Dalton munching on the camera man. So here, again, although this is obviously a fictional film. Here what we again get is this another form

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of cinema attraction. Or at least we get to understand the power of using this term to describe both films. Both the Ironworks, which we are happy to discuss as nonfiction.

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And both this The Big Swallow, which we'd happen to discuss as fiction. But we can see that the same kind of notion where it's not so much about we don't really know much about this camera

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man or the person who ate him. It's not really important to know their motivations. The story whatever here is less important. What is really more important is this one moment

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of this kind of attraction, this moment of appeal where you get, well, first of all, the fact that a mouth can cover the whole screen. And secondly, this kind of brilliant trick

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moment where you have this sort of impossible space from which you see how this cameraman is being devoured. And all of this hidden, whereas of course, we would probably see that there are at least two cuts here.

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This would have likely come as unnoticed for the viewers at the time. It's not necessarily the case they would have been privy to figuring out

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what the trick was in producing this kind of cinematic effect. So in a sense, this is really both an exemplary case of cinema distractions and also truly kind of a really magnificent kind of technical feat.

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Because you can definitely look at it from a perspective of history of film style where, of course, this kind of invisible cuts were nothing new. But what you do get really new if this kind of trick

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where the cameraman disappears. And also, what you do get is this really sustained not perfect but very good kind of a keeping of clear focus from something which is some kind of American

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short to very, very tight close up. Something that you definitely wouldn't see much used before the World War I. For our last case study, let me say

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a few words about the Railway Ride Over the Tay Bridge. So this is essentially one of instances of what people at the time referred to as phantom rides. You would instal a camera on the front of the locomotive.

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There were cases where they were even in the back. But in this particular case, you would instal it in the front of the locomotive, and then essentially have it run as the train would travel

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through the different types of scenery. And essentially, how these things operated were as a sort of virtual tourism. People would be invited in a sense

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to have an opportunity to travel through these lands that they might not have an opportunity to simply because of most often due to economic reasons. Because at the time, the train tickets were probably

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as expensive as, you know, intercontinental flights might be these days. So it was definitely a bit of a more expensive sport. Now probably the really interesting thing

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about these phantom rides is that they seem to have had a double life. Well, let's say, call it a double shelf life because after if they were made around, let's say, 1900,

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then they would have been kind of resuscitated perhaps five, six years later during this era of what was referred to as Hale's Tours. And Hale's Tours were this essentially early emerging

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technologies. Or if you want a more kind of a contemporary term, essentially, virtual reality devices. So how would this look like?

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You would literally have train cars. So cinemas would be-- train cars would double as cinemas. You would have people entering the cinema.

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They would be met by a person who would be selling the ticket, but they would be dressed as a conductor. You would be let into this cart, and then in front of you

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this essentially phantom ride would be projected. So you have an impression as though you are sitting in this car and travelling through this space. But not only that, this car would

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have had all sorts of mechanical contraptions that they could tilt left and right, even back and front. There would be this kind of audio sounds, this kind of clanking sounds as though things could go faster,

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things could go slower depending on what was being projected. There were also kind of whistles. The conductor be whistling for the next stop. They would even have fans, which would

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be kind of blowing the wind in your ear to get the impression of this kind of travel ride, let's say. And all of this, importantly, I would like to emphasise that it was not the case of people being fooled into falsely believing

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that they're travelling. Rather, it was this some sort of elaborate, let's say, technical apparatus through which you essentially were kind of lifted into imagining that you're travelling.

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It's not really-- you would not say this kind of naive spectator who falsely believe that the train is going to run out of this kind of notorious myth of the early cinema, where

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allegedly the first spectators when seeing the Lumiere train, they thought the train is going to run them over and murder them all in the process. Rather, this was a very kind of elaborate kind

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of a game of make believe in which you put yourself in this, let's say, susceptible position. But you're by no means fooled. Rather, you're like in a sense in which you are, for instance,

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thrilled in a cinema when you're watching a horror, and you're screaming like, ah, look behind you. They're going to-- nobody here is genuinely believing somebody is genuinely, kind of, is genuinely

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in danger. Rather, you're caught up in this kind of active participatory game of make believe, where you're essentially asked to imagine that you're travelling in this country.

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And if you really get this vocabulary of you're invited to travel in imagination when you look at the kind of surrounding, let's say, promotional material and reviews

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for these phantom rides initially. And then they're kind of a resuscitation in this later Hale's Tour for a few years around 1905. So in a sense, although for us this is--

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you could argue what could be a more blatantly nonfiction film than this? This is a relatively uneventful 30, 40, 50 mile per hour ride through some kind of idyllic bucolic scenery.

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It could be argued that, in fact, for the contemporaries, this is an extremely exciting joy ride, which if you think about fiction as a very specific form of imagining, a form of imagining where you're supposed

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to imagine something, and not-- this is not only a case of authorial intentions but also a case of how these things are promoted, how these things are written about in the press.

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Then you could even argue that for the people at the time, who would have been watching this phantom rides for the first time, it's essentially fictions of travel to different locales.

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First and foremost, what digitalization has introduced is the sheer availability of this primary material. You have to keep in mind that when people kind of first started taking early cinema, let's say,

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serious in their own right. In the sense that they didn't simply think about it as some kind of germ of later narrative cinema, but they really thought about it as sort of cinema which

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had its own aesthetic, which had its own kind of values. This is precisely this term of cinema of attractions that is trying to capture this. At the time, you could only see a very limited amount of films.

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And if you were using this to make some kind of generalisations about film history, you would, of course, make certain types of generalisations that might not bear the fact that there

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are plenty of other films around them that might not feel fit your kind of a schema. So what digital sources such as these really allow you to is to give you the widest breadth of available material

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possible. Now of course, it's still the case that majority of films have been lost and most likely forever, and here and there we might expect

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some brilliant discoveries like the Mitchell and Kenyon collection. But overall, it's definitely-- it's like with-- what's it called?

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The historical record of dinosaurs. Most of these things. Most of these kind of species will be lost. But at least you will get some kind

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of image, some kind of a general kind of idea of what this, let's say, ecosystem of early cinema might have looked like. But there is perhaps one thing that we should be a bit careful about in terms of a digitised material of films

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is that we shouldn't forget about the context. We shouldn't forget about the fact that, although for instance, nowadays with digital platforms what you get,

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you essentially get access to single films. You essentially get access to these case studies that we've been talking about. Whereas you have to, for instance,

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just to give one point kind of a context, you have to keep in mind that nobody would have come back then to cinema to see a single film. Nobody would have come to see--

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nobody would even know what the title of this film was, essentially, except the proprietors and the people who are selling these films. What you would really come to is a sort

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of a show where most often it wouldn't even be a exclusively film show. It would be some kind of vaudeville or something like that.

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And then last 10 minutes there might be a film screening. And then those like last 10, 20 minutes you get a programme of like, you know, 10, 15 films. And these films could have been organised almost

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along the principle of, I don't know, say, maximum variety. So you might see a phantom ride. You might see a little scripted fictional film. You might see non-scripted but corralled,

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you know, films about workers leaving some factories. But, or on the other hand, there could have been a more unified programme. You might just see films of people, of heroes and warfare

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in the Boer area in the Transvaal region. So one thing to keep in mind, although this is definitely truly a great opportunity with whatever it might be that-- with whatever chance you

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might have to see this primary materials is truly excellent. And it's difficult to do any type of history without this primary material. It's always good to keep in mind there

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is a context to this primary material, and that it's also something worth exploring.