A Celebration of Early Cinema in Durham

for the 120th anniversary of the first Lumière screening

Do you love cinema history?

This post is less ‘photo-driven’ and more of an ‘I Love Durham’ post.

We were at the Durham Hotel for the 120th anniversary of film event hosted by Durham Cinematheque. They had nifty displays and hands-on areas (hand crank a film forward and backwards for fun!), as well as the info on local film houses.

Tom Whiteside  showed an assortment of real film prints of a large assortment of topics going all the way back to 1895 (most were humorous). It was such a joy to sit an laugh with a room full of neighbors at films that are so rarely seen.

For an idea of what we saw, check out the Lumiere Brother’s films and the Edison films on YouTube.

And these highbrows ones prove that our cheesy films today have a loooong legacy:

The Untamable Whiskers (1904) Georges Méliès

Lumière – Snowball Fight (1896)

Babies Quarrel 1896

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

Boxing Cats

And Tom Whiteside of Duke reminded me of this great bit of Durham History:

Negro Durham Marches On (sort of a chamber of commerce promotion of the success of Black Wall Street, business and education in early Durham).

 

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