Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

On the main page the link to the video clip at the Leeds University website, I believe is a clip of the Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge film, although, sadly, the website does not make this clear.

To be able to see people from nearly 120 years ago, walking and moving is quite incredible, like a window into a different age. The movement of the carriages, horses and people makes history come alive. I feel privileged to have seen it.

Take a look, this is one of the oldest moving images you are ever likely to see.

I am surprised there are no more significant links to this entry and the Roundhay film on IMDb. I think it is something to be celebrated.

Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888)

If you've ever wondered what the first movies ever made were then here you go. Director Louise Le Prince shot these two films with a single lense camera he made in 1888. From what I've read, both were shot in October of 1888 because the director's mother died this month and she's featured in the first film (which I just had to watch twice). The first film has some sort of creepy feel along with it but if you're interested then you can see them at IMDb or Youtube. Both just last for two seconds but at least I can now say I saw the first film ever made.

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince filmed this epic the very same year he gave us Roundhay Garden Scene. Instead of his family walking in circles he filmed, as the title would suggest, traffic crossing Leeds bridge. And when I say traffic I don't mean cars, trucks and buses. I mean people walking a couple of guys who were lucky enough to have horses and carriages.

Since Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince was the ONLY director to release any films in 1888 it proves he was the best director of his era. He didn't need big actors or loads of effects or a computerized ape. Just a camera and a bridge. And he was the man who gave birth to cinema. Not literally, that would be hideous.

How interesting, moving images from 1888. This film only plays for two seconds and could be considered as the second film ever made, after 'Roundhay Garden Scene' from the same year and same director.

That director is Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, who mysteriously disappeared in 1890 after making only these two short films. Le Prince is the first great name when you talk about motion pictures, even though Lumière and Edison are much more famous. Seeing his two films, both two seconds long, gives a special feeling. Basically you are watching the birth of cinema. It is the same feeling you get while watching early work from Edison (his kinetoscopic record of a sneeze), Lumière (the arrival of a train) and Méliès (the first science-fiction narrative). You should try it!

By the way. The two seconds shows the Leeds Bridge full with pedestrians, horses and carriages.

In 1888 the city of Leeds, in England, became part of history of cinema as the place where the first movies were made. It was the place where a French inventor named Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince successfully tested his invention for the first time and created the first moving images in history. Of course, history often credits either Thomas Alva Edison or the Lumière brothers as the inventors of cinema, and not without a reason, as they were the first who made public exhibitions of movies; however, it was Louis Le Prince who shot the first movies a couple of years before Edison and the Lumières. Sadly, Le Prince would die under mysterious circumstances shortly after this monumental achievement (in 1890), and so, being unable to offer public demonstrations, his name was soon forgotten when film was presented by other inventors. Despite this tragic turn of events, it's never late to give the proper credit to Louis Le Prince as the father of cinema.

In the first movie ever, "Roundhay Garden Scene", Le Prince captured his wife's family on a day at the garden, as they walked and moved in order to test his camera. For his second experiment, Le Prince went to Leeds Bridge, and shot a 2 seconds of the traffic crossing the bridge. The carriages pulled by horses are captured by Le Prince's camera in what could be considered as the very first documentary in history, as it shows another typical day at the Leeds bridge. Obviously, Le Prince's intention was to capture real moving objects to prove that his invention was not fake, so what better way to do it than filming the traffic? Despite its extremely short runtime, this movie is quite interesting as it's a small glimpse to life in the late Victorian era, almost like a time machine to a past that now, more than 100 years later feels very distant.

Watching this movie (as well as "Roundhay Garden Scene") today is a strangely mystifying experience, as while in its short runtime barely nothing happens, the fact that before this movie there wasn't anything, that this was the very first time a movie was made, gives the film an almost supernatural atmosphere. The experiment was successful and cinema was born. It's a tragedy that Le Prince didn't live to see how his invention would grow, and never witnessed his invention becoming an art form and a new way of entertainment. While he never saw the magic of Georges Méliès's movies, or the narrative methods of Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Griffith, Le Prince showed the bridge. Edison, Lumière, and the rest of the pioneers would follow him and change history for ever. 10/10