Watching the Edwardians ............. moving images from the early 20th century

I now have my own copy of some Mitchell & Kenyon short films and they are a wonderful introduction to the world I often write about in the early years of the the last century.

Most of the time the stories are drawn from still images  but these short films vividly take me to the early 20th century.

They were often  made in the morning and shown in the afternoon and simply record the way we lived.

“The Mitchell & Kenyon film company was a pioneer of early commercial movies based in Blackburn in Lancashire at the start of the 20th century. 

They were originally best known for minor contributions to early fictional narrative film and Boer War dramatisation films, but the discovery in 1994 of a hoard of film negatives led to restoration of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection, the largest surviving collection of early non-fiction actuality films in the world. 

This collection provides a fresh view of Edwardian Britain and is an important resource for historians.”*

I had seen some of them on television but was always doing other things, so I was over the moon when I came across Electric Edwardians** which is a collection of their material released by the BFI.

"Probably the most exciting film discovery of recent times, the films of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon were commissioned by travelling exhibitors at the dawn of the twentieth century for screening in town halls, at village ftes or local fairs. 

Advertised as 'local films for local people', the audience paid to see their neighbours, children, family and themselves on the screen, glimpsed at local football matches, leaving work, marching in civic processions or enjoying the annual works holidays.

The films of Mitchell & Kenyon take us on a tour of everyday life in Edwardian Britain. They have been identified and researched by Dr Vanessa Toulmin of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield. 

The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon, the hugely successful BBC TV series, subsequently released on DVD by BFI Video, introduced audiences to these miraculous views of the past. Now this new DVD offers the opportunity to explore the Collection in greater depth.

The material is taken from 28 hours of footage and represents a cross-section of the subjects covered in the Collection. 

From factory gates to football matches, the leaving of Liverpool to the leaving of work, the workers on holiday and at play, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to see the world through the eyes of the working communities of the time.

The films are grouped into five sections: Youth and Education, The Anglo-Boer War, Workers, High Days and Holidays and People and Places; a total of 35 full-length films in all, plus five 'hidden' items. 

They are set to a specially commissioned score by Sheffield-based duo In The Nursery and presented in a digipack, with extensive extras offering much background material.”***








Pictures; from Electric Edwardians

* Mitchell & Kenyon, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_and_Kenyon

** Electric Edwardians, Published/distributed by BFI, ISBN/EAN: 5035673006214,

*** Mitchell, Sagar; Kenyon, James, B.F.I, http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_107.html