Charles Urban Trading Company

An inventor uses a wireless controlled flying torpedo to destroy enemy airships.

In 1953, in an old cabinet of a former photographer from Zermatt, a first mountaineering film was found. It was a silent film from the first era showing the ascent of the Matterhorn by a group of guides across the Hornli ridge. The film is attributed to the American Frederick Burlingham and dated 1901 and is therefore the first mountaineering film in history. The story of the discovery was also dressed in a certain aura of legend and mystery as it was told that the original copy of the film had been lost forever in a shipwreck in the Atlantic and was the only copy printed that remained. The film was renamed Cervin 1901 or Cervino 1901, and in 2014, after being restored again. But the truth is that this whole story, which has somehow held together throughout this period, is full of inaccuracies...

A cheeky female jester uses the smoke of her cigarette to make things appear and disappear. After showing her talents by playing with a chair or a dog, she lets clowns appear; one female, and two male. The male clowns fight each other over the girl who gets changed over and over again by the jester.

In 1906, the Arlberg Railway, which connects the Austrian cities of Innsbruck and Bludenz, is the only east-west mountain railway in Austria. This 340-second "ghost railroad ride" shows the view from the back of a train, though I'm not sure if it's heading east or west. This kind of film, in vogue at the time, is an intermediate form of short reality, which often showed a train engaging in a bend, and a feature documentary. Its editing is live, linear and temporal, and the cuts are very apparent. Indeed, the choices of where to place the cuts seem to have avoided the less populated stretches. There are plenty of buildings to see, even when the train is not at the station.

An actuality of the Brock's fireworks factory to celebrate its 40th anniversary organizes. The final shot has two flaming portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, originally presented by Brock's at the coronation in 1902. The film is a cornucopia of colors, as it was originally a hand-painted film. The 2011 restoration has tried to revive the brilliance and the impact of colors through digital reproduction. The original film archival print is at the National Cinema Museum.

A statue of Hope revives and finds a home for a waif.

A magician's son plays tricks with his father's magic wand.

Punished for mistreating the family pets, a young boy uses his chemistry set to wreak revenge on his parents.

With a dual motion a cruise ship and a fishing boat pass one another on the Nile and butlers in turbans set up a wooden gangway. Thanks to a rope and pulley system cows climb skywards then disappear into the hold of the sailing vessel. On the bank, black-haired women rock back and forth, bursting out laughing and showing the first signs of going into a state of trance. Never-before filmed gestures and faces of the people of the Nile succeed one another, uprooted to an unknown, magical world. The Banks of the Nile is one of the first experiments of film in colour that uses the Kinemacolor process.

Animated film featuring the hand of Walter R. Booth drawing a coster and his donah who come to life and dance. The hand then crumples up the paper and dispenses it in the form of confetti. (BFI)

It might not take you long to cotton on to the trick of this film, but the results are still impressive. Though the various strings, wools and embroideries if this film are certainly animated in one sense, it is not through stop-motion animation. The time-consuming process of manipulating threads frame-by-frame is avoided by simply using reverse film techniques.

A clerk, unable to stop playing the game of Diabolo, strays in and out of precarious situations while playing with the toy.

The devil hijacks a train trip in France. Made by magician turned filmmaker Walter Booth, who established the Charles Urban Trading Company to make films in his own London garden.

A gentleman is here shown partaking of a little lunch of bread and cheese, and occasionally is seen to glance at his morning paper through a reading glass. He suddenly notices that the cheese is a little out of the ordinary, and examines it with his glass. To his horror, he finds it to be alive with mites, and, in disgust, leaves the table. Hundreds of mites resembling crabs are seen scurrying in all directions. A wonderful picture and a subject hitherto unthought of in animated photography. Notable for being the first science film made for the general public.

A dog leads a detective to a robber's hideout and fetches the police.

This fragment comprises just over half of the original film and features a parade of partially-submerged submarines and destroyers launching torpedoes into netting rigged alongside the Dreadnought.

An one of the two suriving sections of Urban's original nine-part, 2,500-ft documentary, an exceptionally observant view of London life.

Newsreel footage of an execution by beheading of Li-Tang, the Chinches chief of a band of Manchurian bandits. Shot during the Russo Japanese war by the Charles Urban Trading Company. Charles Urban was formerly a partner with the Warwick Trading company who shot many newsreels of the day.

A battle between two forces takes place. There's no information on this 4-minute film aside from the fact that it was available from Charles Urban's Urban Trading Company, one of the most vigorous of British film production and distribution companies in the era. It's a well-composed and edited piece for 1907. The uniforms of the opposing forces, one in dark uniforms and one in white, under battle standards with the Union Jack look good. The field pieces and the medics transporting the wounded are likewise believable, although the compositions, if anything, look too good for it to have been war games; likewise, the smoke from the artillery obscures the action.

A short documentary about China in the early 20th Century.