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Using Films in the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection as Primary Sources-- Selected Case Studies Professor Vanessa Toulmin

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How might a student or researcher use the films in the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection as primary resources? Professor Vanessa Toulmin, Lead Curator and Researcher

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of the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection; Director of City & Cultural Engagement, Partnerships and Regional Engagement and Chair or Early Film and Popular Entertainment at the University of Sheffield, UK

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When you're using the material of the films as primary resources, you've got to think about what your subject matter is. So if you're in urban history, look at the films

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on terms of urban space. Look at what they capture. Like in the Sheffield street scene, the Sheffield Street Accident from 1902, it's interesting from a film history

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viewpoint because it's actually a real, live event. So the masonry fell off that department store. In September 1902, and Mitchell and Kenyon were filming something else, but they got there after the event.

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So it's not like a disaster film because it's the aftermath. So that's interesting, but if you were an urban planner, you look at that film, look at how transport intersects, look at how people look around.

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So you want to ask questions of urban space, how people interacted, and how people lived and played on the street. So with that very film, there's two different responses

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depending on your discipline. So I think each film has got to be approached from a viewpoint of what discipline and what are you looking at here.

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So the films can be there for entertainment historians because they tell you the audience. They can be there for Edwardian or Victorian scholars because they tell you the very world which we write about

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and see through notes and books and archives and pictures. But they're moving and living and really being there. If you are a sociologist, you can look at how people interact and has that changed.

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So we brought in 20 different types of historians, but I'm sure there's other people and others groups of other researchers, but it's bring your specialist knowledge and what the films can tell you

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about it. Case Study 1-- Tram Ride into Halifax (1902) So another view to look at when you're looking at the film, so the tram ride films are all specifically interesting.

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But most of the films of trams shows the urban sprawl. They show us this bustling Metropolitan urban centre, people interacting. You get a horse tram.

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You get an electric tram. You don't very rarely see a motorcar, but that's a bit later. So you see all these different aspects,

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but the Tram Ride into Halifax shows you the rural, shows you the city on the edge of the countryside. It shows you that urban landscape as you come into it. So it shows you that journey from the rural to the urban.

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So that's a really interesting film in that way. Also shows the power of the tram. Also shows the importance of the tram for that early first decade of the 20th century.

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But questions you might want to ask is, is that how did that impact on people lived? Were they commuters? Were they people living and working in the country

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or living in the town? Were they day trippers? What was that tram for? So the transport intersection of the 1900s

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is something that people don't look at, but without transport there wouldn't have been the growth of the industrial city. So that film, in a way, captures that, by the fact,

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that by the end of the 19th century, 90% of the population were living in urban centres. So that the railway, but the tram is equally as important by the Edwardians.

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And that film demonstrates it. So think of those questions when you're looking at it. And think of it also from the viewpoint from film history. It's a phantom ride.

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You never actually get to see people. You see landscape and scenery, and so it's a journey. Case Study 2-- St George's Day Procession in Liverpool (1901) So the procession films in the Mitchell and Kenyon

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are really a quite incredible source of social history, urban history, entertainment and procession history, customs and traditions. The list is endless.

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And it's only when you see them on film that you see the incredible impact of them. Today's society we see processions of relics of another era.

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In the Victorian and the Edwardian period, people lived on the streets. It was an extension of their front room. And the St. George's Day Procession in Liverpool

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shows you-- it's a reinvented tradition, so they're celebrating St. George's Day. It also shows you the Nelson Memorial,

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so it's a throwback to another previous great occasion in British military history, even though St. George's is an invention. But it's also the crowds and how people respond.

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It's an incredibly vibrant film of the crowd, of the psychology of the crowd. And at no point do you feel that crowd is threatening, do you feel that crowd is, I suppose, a danger.

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And that's in comparison to modern films where you see crowds as riots and crowds as danger. So people were comfortable on the streets. People interacted with the streets,

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and they interact with all the transport around them as well. And you don't see any health and safety. So the interesting thing about those films is the comfort or ease of which people

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are processing and parading. The enjoyment and the joy of community and sense of place and pride of place as well. So there's lots of ways you can look at that.

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And it doesn't have to be through the jingoistic aspect of St. George's Day. It's what that tells you about the people of Liverpool, their relationship with national events, the quite obviously,

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lots of Naval Academy because Liverpool is a naval city. But also the importance of people living and being, celebrating, being part of the street. And all of those linked into the very traditional, old customs

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of tradition and procession and parades. Case Study 3-- Leeds Athletic and Cycling Club Carnival at Headingley (1902) Popular entertainment were the reason why Mitchell and Kenyon

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films existed. Without popular entertainment, there would have been no collection. And the reason why is because they

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were made for the popular entertainment industry. They often were shown as part of the popular entertainment industry, but they rarely filmed the popular entertainment history.

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So the films that they have, of the context of which they are part of, are really, really fascinating. So you would think there would be more films of acts and performances in the Mitchell

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and Kenyon collection. But there isn't because it's not the actual act. It's not the Edison single act or the biograph. They weren't filming novelty acts.

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They weren't filming skits. They were filming-- they weren't filming popular entertainment. They weren't doing the cinema of attractions. They're filming what people saw around them,

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part of that world. They were just part of it. So when you see the films of popular entertainment, you've got to realise they're almost filming their own

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creation. So incidentally, the parade and the event at Headingley in 1902, in July 1902, it's actually the acts from the local Tivoli Theatre in Leeds

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who were part of the actual carnival day at Headingley, the home of sport. And they're brilliant because they're the Masondo's barrel-jumping champions of the world.

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Now, as a novelty act, it's incomprehensible to us that somebody would go and watch somebody jumping in and out of a barrel. But it was a really, really popular and important act

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within the novelty tradition of popular entertainment. So what's interesting about that film, yeah, as a performance historian, you can see the act. But secondly, you can see the act

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stripped of its glamour in the middle of a sports field. And it's part of a carnival day, a fundraising day. And then thirdly, you just see the complete bizarreness of the act, both the one-legged jumping over the hurdles,

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and then the jumping from barrel to barrel. And it's stripped of all-- it's almost like a street act, but it's not. It's an act that would have been performed.

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So all of those things you look at, it's a parade. It's part of a fundraising. It's a carnival, but it's a film about one act. Case Study 4-- Sedgwick's Bioscope Showfront

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at Pendlebury Wakes (1901) Mitchell and Kenyon rarely formed the actual vehicle of entertainment with which it was in. So you see the occasional glimpses of the halls,

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or they stood outside the Theatre. They don't do interior shots because film technology wasn't really capable of the close up interior shots unless it was in a studio.

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So when you see the actual outside, the Bioscope show was a show that was made to show films on fair grounds. And Sedgwick's was a very famous company who

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used to show menagerie shows. So they showed wild animal shows. So often, we know that the films were shown over the lions cage and that.

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The fun to the show was called a walk-up show, so you'd walk up and down and walk around and around. What's amazing about this film, you see the showman, and you actually see James Kenyon

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on the front of the film. So that's the one film that we identified Mitchell and Kenyon, the company, with the showman. Sedgwick and Kenyon are on the front of the Bioscope show

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waving at each other. And he's the little man with the little beard and the hat. And then you see this parade of people going up and down, up and down.

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And it's all the working class crowd. So Pendlebury Wakes, It's a local mining town near Oldham. It's an old standing fair and tradition that goes back many hundreds of years.

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And the film captures the excitement of the fair, but it also captures the entertainment business within the Mitchell and Kenyon collection because you get the showman, commissioner.

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You get the actual show the film is going to be shown in, and you get the filmmaker. So that film is a perfect example of the interdisciplinary relationship between Mitchell

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and Kenyon and the entertainment industry which it is part of. And why did they film it? I don't know. It's almost like they're having a laugh at the end of it,

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isn't it? And what's really interesting as well, you see the same people going round and round. So they're not really going in.

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They're going up the stairs, across the back of the stage, and down again. Case Study 5-- Co-operative Wholesale Society Clothing Factory in Manchester (c.

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1900) There are literally 100 and plus factory gate films in the Mitchell and Kenyon collection, and the Co-operative Wholesale Society Company in Manchester

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is one that really demonstrates the link between the making of the film for a commercial product rather than actuality or social history. And in a way, one is almost linked more to the Lumiere one.

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So it starts with a showman. And it also has a sign, so it tells you what the company is and it all says the showman in there. Then it has the women coming out of the factory.

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So it's interesting from the viewpoint of co-operative history because, at that point, there was probably 1,000 different cooperatives in the United Kingdom, primarily in the North of England

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because that's where it was founded in Rochdale. But also, this relationship with the showman is directing the film, advertising the film, and almost it is his film.

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And also the relationship between the women. So it's a very interesting film in terms of gender. Shows you a crowd of women. It's a holiday film, again, but it's

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a holiday film of people being staged to show later in that night. But again, that product placement of the showman is very, very clear.

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And the more you watch the films, and I think the trick is to watch those films, is to work out and identify the showmen because they're often the ones not looking at the camera

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but conducting the camera. They're not playing the music, but they are the conductor. And you see how they make people move in front of the camera. They sometimes change the flow.

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They change the direction. So the cameraman is following the instructions of the showman who is always in the crowd. And sometimes, they try and take away.

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They're not want to be a centre shot. Other times they want to be. Other times they're not. And sometimes, you'll suddenly see

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them tilt their hat to the camera or smile at the camera or turn their back on the camera. And actually, recognising in all those films where the showman is is a really good train of research and who that showman

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was. And it's always showman, even though on the fairground 20% of the people who exhibited films were women. So we've yet to find a show woman

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commissioning films in the Mitchell and Kenyon collection. But we know that they actually showed them. So it's interesting is that relationship with the showman and the crowd and the camera.

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And that film in particular shows that, and the co-operative films and the co-operative industry was a very important part of women's work at the time. So it's an incredibly interesting gendered space

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as well that they're showing. Case Study 6-- Blackpool North Pier (1903) Blackpool North Pier was shot in 1903, and it's the first of the oldest.

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It's the oldest pier in Blackpool and the second oldest pier in the country. So from a viewpoint of what the social function of piers were in the 19th century.

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It's really fascinating. Modern day piers now, what there's 28, 30 piers surviving in the United Kingdom. But at the time, every seaside place

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had a pier, if not one, if not two, and Blackpool had three and still has three. We associate piers with kind of like cheaper type of entertainment, good companions, Piero shows.

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We don't associate piers with people in top hat and tails promenading up and down, and that's what's amazing about the North Pier film because it shows you a holiday crowd of the highest elite.

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And the reason why is you had to pay to go on the pier. At that pier, was always the posh pier. It was known as the posh pier. It was the second pier in the country,

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built by Eugenius Birch the greatest pier builder in the 19th century. And it was the most elite and exclusive of Blackpool's three piers.

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And it's still the most important pier in Blackpool today. And it's a pier that was always intended for the kind of entertainment there.

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There's a wonderful-- another film and a wonderful in the Mitchell and Kenyon collection that shows a Piero show on the pier, which is quite amazing.

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And they're dressed in sailor outfits, and they're singing and dancing. And the crowd is very restrained and very-- difficult to say posh because you don't know because they're

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holiday clothes. But this is people. And the date of the film is either Easter, so they're promenading on Easter Sunday, or Whitsunday,

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and I think it's Whitsunday. And Whitsunday was one of the-- after Easter. Christmas wasn't the celebration that it is today. It was the traditional holidays of Easter

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and Whits was the popular holidays for the working classes. And Whitsunday was one of the most popular, and that's when people paraded.

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They were on holiday. They walked. They celebrated with their family. Or they went to Blackpool and put on their posh clothes

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and walked up and down the pier. And you actually understand the word promenade when you watch that film because they're literally parading to be seen.