On Saturday night, a small crowd filled a 120-seat theater in Fremont, Calif., to watch a movie unlike any other on the big screen, one that offers a fresh look at a tragic chapter in American history.

The nine-minute silent film, much of it previously thought to be lost, shows the ruins left by the earthquake that ravaged San Francisco 112 years ago, according to David Kiehn, a film historian who helped to identify and restore the footage, which he said was originally shot by the pioneering Miles Brothers film studio in San Francisco.