I did a degree in film studies 2010-2013 and the recently discovered collection of Mitchell and Kenyon actuality films from the late 1890s and 1900s were still in the process of being restored and brought to the public, so even up till so recently Mitchell and Kenyon and their significant place in the history of film as a medium was not well known. Everybody alive on planet earth today has grown up learning the conventions of the moving image from an early language. It is a language that we all speak fluidly and is vitally important for so many aspects of our lives. And Mitchell and Kenyon, two northern British blokes were at the forefront of developing this medium and this language. And this makes me proud and inspired watching their recordings which are shown and discussed in this 3 part documentary. What is even more fascinating, is that, these recordings are of the common working people and show life in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras in a way that we have never seen them before. We have only ever seen people from this time before in dramas and reconstructions. This was a time before World War 1, when class divisions crumbled and gender roles began to be questioned. This really was the 'Old World' so to speak. Never before seen on camera in this way. And one tends to think that the fabulous opulence and glamour of the dress and comportment of this time, as well as the abject poverty, tend to be exaggerated for modern audiences and in the modern imagination, but these films show that there is no exaggeration at all! The upper class women really did walk the streets in corsets and huge dresses and wearing humungous picture hats. And the men really did all wear 3 piece suits and hats, no matter if they were working in the factories and grime all day and probably never washed too frequently. It is remarkable to become a fly on the wall in the lives of these people that lived oh so long ago. And to think that these recordings were sat in a dusty corner of a warehouse for 100 years is remarkable. And the fact that these recordings are of British people in the Britain of old makes them fascinating and proud to watch.
