Movi Hub

Nanook of the North

1922

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

7.0

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

2007

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

5.9

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

1888

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

5.2

Carmencita

1894

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

7.5

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

1927

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

4.1

Men Boxing

1891

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

0.0

A Day with the Gipsies

1922

A troupe of gypsies takes a traveler along with them on their day trip.

0.0

The Wheat Industry

Invalid Date

Tells the life story of a grain of wheat In Casselton, North Dakota.

7.8

Man with a Movie Camera

1929

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

0.0

The Diver

1911

A fascinating pictorial document: On an old, cluttered work ship, a man is helped on with a bulky, old fashioned diving suit. It's a complicated process, many layers and sections are carefully applied. He goes over the side. Some men row out to what looks like a wrecked barge and set dynamite. Then the diver returns and now laughs and acknowledges the camera. The other men, now safely away, blow up the barge.

0.0

Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

2007

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

0.0

Amazon: Longest River in the World

1918

Documentary by Portuguese Silvino Santos, about the Amazon, its flora, fauna, its inhabitants and among other wonderful images from the beginning of the 20th century with alternating close-up shots of caimans, jaguars and tropical flora with footage of Indigenous rituals--including some of the earliest known moving images of the Indigenous Witoto people--and longer sequences showcasing the region’s extractive industries: rubber, the Brazil nut, timber, fishing, even the egret feathers that were a staple of women’s fashion at the time.

6.8

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

1927

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

0.0

The Funeral of Vera Kholodnaya

1919

This film records the vast public response to the early death of Vera Kholodnaya, the first star of Russian cinema.

6.9

À propos de Nice

1930

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

5.5

Days of Thrills and Laughter

1961

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

5.3

Panorama from Top of a Moving Train

1898

With the cameraman atop a moving train car the viewer is given a one minute glimpse of a French urban area.

4.9

Playing Cards

1896

Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.

5.7

Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine"