"AN ABSOLUTE MUST for cineastes.

- The Los Angels Times



Over the course of more than 120 complete films, an art form is born before your eyes.

The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works

Crew Directed by

Directed by Edwin S. Porter , Edweard Muybridge and Thomas Edison

The European Pioneers

Crew Composed by

Directed by

Composed by Neil Brand Directed by (various)

Crew Directed by

Directed by (various)

The Magic of Melies

Crew Composed by Alexander Rannie

Directed by Georges Méliès

Composed by Alexander RannieDirected by Georges Méliès

Comedy, Spectacle, and New Horizons

Crew Directed by

Directed by (various)

This survey of the cinema's earliest landmarks and rarities features the 1877 motion studies of Edward Muybridge, the early productions of Thomas Edison's Black Maria, the actualites of Louis Lumiere, George Mieles' A Trip to the Moon (1902), and climaxes with the premiere of a mint-condition print of Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, complete with the authentic hand-tinting witnessed by audiences of 1903. more info From the archives of the British Film Institute, this collection features forty distinctive works from cinema's infancy, produced by such Euro pioneers as R.W. Paul, George Edward Smith, Fran Mottershaw, Walter Haggar & Sons, and James Bamforth, as well as by acknowledged innovators like the Lumiere brothers and Mieles. Includes Demolition of a Wall (1896), Exiting the Factory (1895), and Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (circa 1895). more info Tribute is paid to the screen's first special effects wizard in this special collection of marvelously restored prints. In addition to more than a dozen of his early trompes l'oeil - such as Untamable Wiskers, Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer, and The Mermaid - this volume boasts the illuminating documentary, Georges Méliès, Cinema Magician and a rare hand-tinted print of the fantastic spectacle An Impossible Voyage. more info This edition explores the establishment of cinematic genres in the first years of the 20th Century, offering rare glimpses of the innovative visual comedy of Max Linder, the pioneering Italian epic NERO - or THE BURNING OF ROME, the phenomenal animation of Windsor McCoy, the social realism of Alice Guy Blacha's MAKING OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, D. W. Griffith's early melodrama A GIRL AND HER TRUST, and more! . more info