Foreword
Part One: The Victorian World
Actualities and Topicals
Close Ups:
The Launch of HMS Albion (1898)
The Arrest of Goudie (1901)
Actualities and News
Close Ups:
Biograph's Grand National Mar 24th 1900 (lost film)
Street Life
Close Ups:
Children Dancing to a Barrel Organ (1898)
Launch of the Worthing Lifeboat (1898)
Artistic/Aesthetic
Close Ups:
Sea Cave in Lisbon
Natural History and Science
Close Ups:
Spider on a Web (1900)
Panoramas and Phantom Rides
Close Ups:
Panorama of the Paris Exhibition (1900)
Travel and industry
Close-ups
Feeding the Pigeons in St Mark's Square, Venice (1898)
Local filmp
Close-ups
The factory gate films of M&K
War and military
Close-ups
Battle of Spion Kop: Ambulance Corps Crossing the Tugela River (1900)
Part 2: The Victorian Mind
Comic sketches and facials
Close-ups
The Big Swallow (1901)
Variety acts and novelties
Close-ups
Kitty Mahone (1900)
Promotional films
Close-ups
Mr Moon (1900)
Erotic films
Close-ups
Undressing Extraordinary (1901)
Trick and children's film
Close-ups
Santa Claus (1898)
Drama and Adaptation
Close-ups
The Death of Poor Joe (1900)
Epilogue: A Victorian Crystal Ball

Bryony Dixon is curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive. She is the author of 100 Silent Films (BFI Screen Guides, 2011) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on silent cinema and archiving. She is co-director of the British Silent Film Festival and has programmed films for many international festivals. She has been lead curator on a number of the BFI's recent film restorations, including Underground (1928), Shooting Stars (1927), Epic of Everest (1924), The Great White Silence (1924), all nine surviving Hitchcock silent films and the BFI's large format Victorian films.

In this vivid and accessible new account of the dawn of film in Britain, internationally respected film historian and curator Bryony Dixon introduces us to Britain's first cinematic pioneers - an eclectic mix of chemists, engineers, photography enthusiasts, fairground showmen and magicians - who in a few short years built a vibrant new industry. As she chronicles the emergence of the first embryonic film forms and genres, she reveals often surprising innovations, from cutting-edge science to ingeniously witty tricks and comedies, with filmmakers reflecting existing entertainment forms as well as advancing editing and cinematography in ways that shaped the art of film for many decades after.
Dixon offers fresh insights by focusing on the films themselves - many of them only recently available to view - while building on the work of generations of scholars. In the process, Dixon makes a compelling case for the British filmmakers of the era as inventive and creative figures, every bit as influential as their more celebrated contemporaries in France and the US.