The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon

Watching this documentary mini-series is unlike watching any other documentary series. This is because every single person in the long-lost black and white reels of film presented to us is dead.

If someone had gone out with a camera and filmed the same footage today, we'd be bored stiff. But it's impossible to view "Lost World..." without amazement. The people smile, wave, feel uncomfortable at the intrusion, and feel delighted by the novelty of the static movie camera being handcranked in the street. They're waving at us and making direct eye contact for a prolonged period of time; a direct invitation to contemplate our own mortality.

Also of interest is the quaint story of how over 800 reels of preserved celluloid short films (actualities) were found by chance in the basement of a Blackburn shop in the mid-1990s.

Well worth checking out. A landmark series.

The British Primatives

Electric Edwardians: The Films of Mitchell and Kenyon, released in North America by Milestone Films and Video (www.milestonefilms.com)

Friday October 14 through Thursday October 20, 7:00 & 9:00pm, plus 3:00 & 5:00pm Saturday & Sunday, Grand Illusion Cinema, Seattle

Peter Worden discovered seventeen ice cream tubs filled with 826 uncored rolls of ancient nitrate film and changed the face of British cinema forever. Worden's rescue of this exceptional document along with the British Film Institute's beautiful restoration offers a rare and fragile glimpse into an all but lost and forgotten world. Electric Edwardians is the first look at twenty-eight hours of preserved film. The variable frame speed is a bit odd but easily overlooked when the astonishing value of the images is considered. Due to the tenuous condition of the original negatives the BFI used a painstaking "optical" duplication process. Their efforts reward viewers with an extraordinary window to a lost world of Britain in all it's dreary gloom. The stuff of literature is brought to life in the faces of workers black with coal dust and in the smokestacks of factory towns. The staff of a Cunard liner in their starchy splendor offers visual proof of "ones place" in their world of service. The glass and iron of Blackpool, teeming with the working classes is anything but green and pleasant. In the beginning Edison demonstrated control, planning and a hint of the structure to come. The Lumieres celebrated cinema with a joy and spontaneity that was uniquely French. Mitchell and Kenyon captured a desperate striving for hope and laughter amid despair that is somehow strangely familiar, but with proper manners!

( The American release of the BFI restored films is presented without the narration used in the original broadcasts and with contemporary musical accompaniment. )

The total running time of the films in this program is 71 minutes.

I seen all three editions of The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon and enjoyed them very much. What a pity this series was so short. I'm sure there is plenty more film to show.

Several years ago, several hundred films made by Mitchell and Kenyon were found and were in excellent condition. The films were of life in the UK in the early 20th century and for this series, they were "cleaned up" to make them clearer and the quality is excellent, despite the age. Most of the footage was filmed in the North West, with some footage in the Midlands including a sequence in Nottingham.

The series was presented and narrated by Dan Cruickshank, who gives an excellent account. All three programmes were shown on Friday evenings on BBC2 between 8 and 9 pm.

Come on BBC, more of this please instead of rubbish makeover shows and property programmes.

James Kenyon and Sagar Mitchell are obscure and relatively historically unimportant filmmakers compared to fellow pioneers like Cecil Hepworth, R.W. Paul, G.A. Smith and James Williamson. But, I'm interested in seeing any films this old--as early as the beginning of the twentieth century. Many filmmakers took to making local programs like these in the beginning, most of which are now lost and forgotten, and some of which continue at small festivals, but this is special--this program and its follow-up "Electric Edwardians" broadcast nationally and released on DVD to a wide audience.

The films are largely short actualities like those made by the Lumière brothers (including workers leaving factories), in addition to a few meager early attempts at story films. Fashions, sports, working conditions and other sociological aspects of the times are covered in the series through the films. They are interesting as a record of bygone days, and they are interesting relics in themselves. There isn't, however, very much one can say about them--and this series becomes repetitive, at times, elongating the program into three parts. The tracking down of descendants of people who happened to appear in the films is somewhat interesting at first, but becomes tiresome. Likewise, the story of the discovery of the nitrate and the restoration and preservation of it is also interesting, and one has an opportunity in each episode to hear it. Nevertheless, it's a good program, offering a variety of subjects for various viewer interests, as the presenters examine nearly every angle of these first films.

This comment is on a re-edit of this material titled "Mitchell and Kenyon in Ireland" narrated by Fiona Shaw.

***

This is a truly amazing film experience, because it more than transport you a charmed fictional world. It transports you a strange container — a strange use of the medium. It should be a small shift that makes sense, but its so jarring.

For those who don't know this, it is from the period when movies were new and thought to be much like photographs. Movies weren't there to tell stories, reflect dreams or explore worlds. They were there so you could see yourself, and document events.

The business of movie-making was to roll into town, take some movies of the town, and then show them later that day. People would come to see themselves, even if they hadn't been there because the notion of a captured place was as personal — more — than a captured face.

So this is a collection of these films from Irish cities.

Everyone you see is someone who just happened in front of a camera. All dead, all working as hard as they can to be characters in a film before film really was the model. You see hundreds of people coming from a church after services. Its a Catholic church of course and you can feel the oppression: from one of the worst religious establishments in the modern world on one side and the British occupation on the other. We see a parade of returning Irish soldiers, back from one of England's colonial wars. We see pompous nitwits in costumes and uniforms as if it were Gilbert and Sullivan.

But most dearly and deeply for me some of this shows Dublin as Joyce saw it. The whole thing is narrated by Fiona Shaw, and the historical detail is amazing and fascinating. On watching an exit from a Dublin church, she remarks that a poster barely visible next to the door references a certain reverend who appears in Joyce at least twice. You see, the inside out nature of this thing turned me around. My richest literary experience is Joycean. Its the flavor I often seek in constructed cinema. But here is largely accidental cinema, devoid of narrative, that incidentally brushes an unseen narrative.

Everyone you see either is yearning for escape from the place (a third of the entire nation came to the US in this epoch) or resisting it in some way. The faces. God, the faces.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.