| Yarmouth Fishing Boats Leaving Harbour | |
|---|---|
 Screencap from the film | |
| Directed by | Birt Acres |
| Produced by | Birt Acres |
| Cinematography | Birt Acres |
Release date |
|
Running time | 33 seconds |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | Silent |
Yarmouth Fishing Boats Leaving Harbour (also known as Yarmouth Trawlers [1] ) is an 1896 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, directed by Birt Acres, featuring a fleet of fishing smacks leaving the harbour at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK.
Three fishing boats are seen leaving the harbour at Great Yarmouth. Only the tail end of the first is seen as it leaves the harbour to the right. The second (named Thrive and registered as YH 120) is pulled by a steam paddle tugboat. A third fishing boat (named I Will and registered as YH 723) sails off-screen to the right.
The film was shot by Birt Acres in June or July 1896. [1] It was the first time moving pictures were shot in East Anglia. [2] It was filmed from a single position at the Gorleston Pier end of the harbour, looking back towards Great Yarmouth itself. [2] It was one of two films Birt Acres shot in Yarmouth. The second, which was premiered in 1897, has not survived, but depicted passengers being loaded onto (or unloaded from) a pleasure boat on the beach. [2]
Like other actuality films of the period, the film has no on-screen title, and the name by which the film is generally known is based on its content and references in contemporary sources. [3]
The "attractive Victorian film," was according to Christian Hayes of BFI Screenonline, "one of the twenty-one subjects presented by Birt Acres to the royal family on 21st July 1896, the day before the marriage of Princess Maud to Prince Charles of Denmark, at one of the first royal film performances." [4]
The film was long considered lost but footage discovered in the Henville collection in 1995 has been identified by the BFI as being from this film. [5] This "decaying print," according to Patrick Russell of the BFI, "was discovered and duplicated just in time for 1996's celebration of 100 years of projected film in Britain." [6] Hayes concludes that "the fragmentary nature of the film - the jarring cuts and the deterioration of the print - only serve to make it all the more intriguing."
The following is an overview of the events of 1896 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
Turn of the Tide is a 1935 British drama film directed by Norman Walker and starring John Garrick, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Wilfrid Lawson. It was the first feature film made by J. Arthur Rank. Lacking a distributor for his film, Rank set up his own distribution and production company which subsequently grew into his later empire.
Birt Acres was an American and British photographer and film pioneer. Among his contributions to the early film industry are the first working 35 mm camera in Britain (Wales), and Birtac, the first daylight loading home movie camera and projector. He also directed a number of early silent films.
Jack Cardiff was a British cinematographer, film and television director, and photographer. His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor, to filmmaking more than half a century later.
Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events, places, and things, a predecessor to documentary film. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. 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.
George Garnett Dunning was a Canadian filmmaker and animator. He is best known for producing and directing the 1968 film Yellow Submarine.
Robert William Paul was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker.
The Derby is an 1895 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, produced and directed by Birt Acres for exhibition on Robert W. Paul's Kinetoscopes, featuring the end of the 29 May 1895 Epsom Derby viewed from a raised position close to the finishing line with the main stand in the distance. A photograph of Acres filming the documentary has survived, which shows that the camera used in the production was relatively portable. The film was long considered lost but footage discovered in the Ray Henville collection in 1995 has been identified by the BFI as being from this film.
Opening of the Kiel Canal is an 1895 British short black-and-white silent documentary news film directed and produced by Birt Acres which documents the opening of the Kiel Canal in Germany by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 20 June 1895. It was filmed between June 1895 and July 1895.
The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race is an 1895 British short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Birt Acres. It was filmed on 30 March 1895.
Rough Sea at Dover is an 1895 British short black-and-white silent film, shot by Birt Acres.
Elgar is a British drama documentary made in 1962 by the British director Ken Russell for BBC Television's Monitor series. It dramatised in vigorous style the life of the English composer Sir Edward Elgar.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering English documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
For Those in Peril is a 1944 British war film produced by Ealing Studios that marked the directorial debut of Charles Crichton. The film was developed from a short story by Richard Hillary, an RAF pilot killed in action in January 1943. The basic and relatively slight storyline of For Those in Peril was an end to produce a film with a documentary feel and an element of wartime propaganda. The film stars Ralph Michael and David Farrar.
Crude Set Drama is an 1895 British short black-and-white silent comedy film, produced and directed by Birt Acres for exhibition on Robert W. Paul's peep show Kinetoscopes, featuring two drunken men and a boy squabbling in a small bar. The film was long considered lost but footage discovered in the Henville collection in 1995 has been identified by the BFI as being from this film.
Donald Alexander (1913–1993) was a British documentary film-maker who worked as producer, director, writer and editor of films documenting social and industrial conditions, most notably in the coal-mining industry, between the 1930s and 1970s. The movement of which he was part is now regarded as the golden age of British documentary. Its leading figures also included Paul Rotha, John Grierson, Edgar Anstey, Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright and Arthur Elton.
Granton Trawler was one of the only films that John Grierson directed himself for the Empire Marketing Board/GPO Film Unit. The documentary style film was made in 1934, and was noted for its experimental use of sound without voice over.
Incident at Clovelly Cottage, also known as Incident Outside Clovelly Cottage, Barnet, shot by Birt Acres and produced by Acres and his collaborator Robert W. Paul in March 1895, was the "first successful motion picture film made in Britain".
London is a 1994 British essay film written and directed by Patrick Keiller, narrated by Paul Scofield.
The piece of film of the royal visit to the 1896 Cardiff Exhibition is a British lost black-and-white documentary film produced and directed by Birt Acres on 27 June 1896 when Edward VII, his wife Alexandra, and his daughters Maud and Victoria, visited the Cardiff Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition in Cathays Park. It is considered the first film recording of the British Royal Family, one of the first British news films and the first recording set in Cardiff. The footage was recorded on 70mm negatives.