Gottfried Wilhelm Bitzer was an American cinematographer, notable for his close association and pioneering work with D. W. Griffith.
Star Theatre is a 1901 short documentary film in which time-lapse photography is used to show the dismantling and demolition of New York City's Star Theatre over a period of about a month.
The year 1905 in film involved some significant events.
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their strong liquor and falls deeply asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution.
Joseph Jefferson III, often known as Joe Jefferson, was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedians. Beginning as a young child, he continued as a performer for most of his 76 years. Jefferson was particularly well known for his adaptation and portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on the stage, reprising the role in several silent film adaptations. After 1865, he created no other major role and toured with this play for decades.
Westinghouse Works, 1904 is a collection of American short silent films, each averaging about three minutes in length. The films were taken from April 18, 1904, to May 16, 1904, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and document various Westinghouse manufacturing plants. They were made by G. W. "Billy" Bitzer of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, were shown at the Westinghouse Auditorium at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, and may have been made for that purpose. At least 29 films were produced and 21 remain in the collection which is now a part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was the most prominent U.S. film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events, places, and things, in a similar way to documentary film. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the documentary. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as prominent in early cinema as it would become once documentaries became the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality as a film genre is related to still photography.
The Kinora was an early motion picture device developed by the French inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1895, while simultaneously working on the Cinematograph. It was patented in February 1896.
Foxy Grandpa was an American gag-a-day newspaper comic strip featuring an eponymous character, created by cartoonist Carl E. Schultze drawing under the name of "Bunny." The strip lasted from 1900 to circa 1918, and was at first hugely popular, with stage and silent film adaptations, as well as a party game license. Between 1901 and 1917, Foxy Grandpa was published in books — more than 30 volumes from four different publishers. It was revived as a typeset strip in the 1920s and 1930s.
Herman Casler was an American inventor and co-founder of the partnership called the K.M.C.D. Syndicate, along with W.K-L. Dickson, Elias Koopman, and Henry Marvin, which eventually was incorporated into the American Mutoscope Company in December 1895.
Sherlock Holmes Baffled is an American silent trick film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike that of later screen incarnations. In the film, a thief who can appear and disappear at will steals a sack of items from Sherlock Holmes. At each point, Holmes's attempts to thwart the intruder end in failure.
Frederick S. Armitage was an early American motion picture cinematographer and director, working primarily for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Often identified as "F.S. Armitage" in AM&B paperwork, Armitage had a hand in creating more than 400 often very short subjects for AM&B in the days where its films were made as much for the hand-crank operated Mutoscope device as for projection. Several of Armitage's subjects stand out from the company's regular routine of actualities and comic skits in their innovative use of camerawork, superimpositions, time-lapse photography and other effects then new to the art of film-making.
Gladys Egan was an early 20th-century American child actress, who between 1907 and 1914 performed professionally in theatre productions as well as in scores of silent films. She began her brief entertainment career appearing on the New York stage as well as in plays presented across the country by traveling companies. By 1908 she also started working in the film industry, where for six years she acted almost exclusively in motion pictures for the Biograph Company of New York. The vast majority of her screen roles during that period were in shorts directed by D. W. Griffith, who cast her in over 90 of his releases. While most of Egan's films were produced by Biograph, she did work for other motion-picture companies between 1911 and 1914, such as the Reliance Film Company and Independent Moving Pictures. By 1916, Egan's acting career appears to have ended, and she no longer was being mentioned in major trade journals or included in published studio personnel directories as a regularly employed actor. Although she may have performed as an extra or in some bit parts after 1914, no available filmographies or entertainment publications from the period cite Egan in any screen or stage role after that year.
The Call of the Wild is a 1908 American short silent Western film directed by D. W. Griffith and produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. The short, a "one-reeler", stars Charles Inslee, Harry Solter and Florence Lawrence. Its interior scenes were shot at Biograph's studio facilities in New York City, and its exteriors were filmed on location in Coytesville, today one of the oldest communities in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Wallace McCutcheon Sr. was a pioneer cinematographer and director in the early American motion picture industry, working with the American Mutoscope & Biograph, Edison and American Star Film companies. McCutcheon's wealth of credits are often mixed up with the small handful of films directed by his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. (1884–1928).
Rip Van Winkle is a 1921 American silent fantasy film, directed by Edward Ludwig. Starring Thomas Jefferson and Milla Davenport in the oft-filmed 1819 Washington Irving short story about Rip Van Winkle who falls asleep and wakes up 20 years later. It was made famous in the 19th century as a play by Thomas Jefferson's father, Joseph Jefferson, and Dion Boucicault. T. Jefferson had starred in a 1914 feature-length version of the story, which was re-released in 1921 just as this film was premiering. However, the two should not be confused as the same film, they are two different films starring the same actor.
Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon were two American businessmen who were known for distributing and promoting some of the Edison Studio films, and founding their own business, which was called The Kinetoscope Company.
The Invisible Fluid is a 1908 American silent science fiction comedy film produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company of New York, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr., and starring Edward Dillon. The short's plot relies extensively on the filming and editing technique of substitution splicing, also known as "stop trick", a special effect that creates the illusion of various characters or objects suddenly vanishing on screen.
