Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (French: La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon), also known as Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory and Exiting the Factory, is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years.
The film consists of a single scene in which workers leave the Lumière factory. The workers are mostly female who exit the large building 25 Rue St. Victor, Montplaisir on the outskirts of Lyon, France, as if they had just finished a day's work.
Three separate versions of this film exist. There are a number of differences between these, for example the clothing style changes demonstrating the different seasons in which they were filmed. They are often referred to as the "one horse," "two horses," and "no horse" versions, in reference to a horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first two versions (pulled by one horse in the original and two horses in the first remake).
Trivia:
It was the first film ever to be projected to a paying audience.
Recent findings have produced two more copies of this scene, where all the workers didn't manage to leave the factory in time. The big dog appears in them all.
This film's existence was forgotten shortly after it was screened. It was rediscovered in 1985 in Lyon, France, 90 years after it was shot.
On October 4th 1936, the people of East London came out on the streets to resist the fascists marching through their communities.
Britain at the time was torn by social and economic divisions, few places saw more poverty than East London. In 1932 Sir Oswald Mosley had formed the British Union of fascists (BUF). They adopted the black shirt as their uniform. The BUF portrayed Jews as seeking world domination and of stealing jobs. In March 1936 Mosley had declared "it was the intention of British Fascism to challenge and break for ever the power of Jews in Britain."
Many Jewish families lived around Cable Street. 3,000 of Mosley's Blackshirts attempted to march through the area. Resistance by local people - trade unionists, communists, the Labour Party amongst others - forced the march to be abandoned. They said "They Shall Not Pass".
The successful defeat of Nazi sympathizer Oswald Mosley's march through the East End, known as the Battle of Cable Street, is being commemorated this year by marches, talks and other events in this corner of London.
Anti-fascist demonstrators flee as police attack a barricade.
British policemen dismantle a barrier near Mark Lane, London, to make way for a march by supporters of the leader of the British Union of Fascists Oswald Mosley. The barricade was constructed by members of the Communist Party during the Battle of Cable Street.
British Union of Fascists members salute their leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.
British politician Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley (1896 - 1980) inspects members of his British Union of Fascists in Royal Mint Street, London. Their presence sparked a riot which became known as the Battle of Cable Street.
Policemen arresting a demonstrator when fascists and communists clashed during a march know as the Battle of Cable Street led by British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley in London's East End.
Before the onset of the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties were a time of economic prosperity, new technology and perhaps most famously, dancing. Here, 10-year-old Mildred Unger takes one of the hippest dance crazes of the time to the skies as she performs the Charleston on the wing of an airplane in 1927!
Meet Mildred Unger. In this footage taken in 1927, she's just 10 years old.
But just because she's 10, doesn't mean she's not fearless. Here she is getting into a plane...
...so she can stand on its wings without any apparent safety gear on. She is doing this so...
...she can dance the Charleston 2,000 feet in the air.
You might want to hold your breath as you watch this incredible footage.
In September 2012, Michael Rhodes, a technician at the National Declassification Center (NDC) in College Park, Md., donned white cotton gloves, entered a climate-controlled room, and opened a cardboard file box. It was time for the report inside—"Project 1794 Final Development Summary Report 2 April—30 May 1956"—to become public.
Rhodes's job is to read such documents, catalog them, and make them available to historians, journalists, and the curious. The paper was crisp, like new. Rhodes began to read.
He soon realized that the file box contained highly unusual material. "As I was processing the collection, I glimpsed this weird red flying-disc icon in the corners," Rhodes says. Inside the box was a trove of oddities: cutaway schematics of disc-shaped aircraft, graphs showing drag and thrust performance at more than Mach 3, black-and-white photos of Frisbee shapes in supersonic wind tunnels. The icon was a flying saucer on a red arrow—the insignia of a little-known and strange sideshow in aeronautical design. Rhodes was leafing through the lost records of a U.S. military flying saucer program.
The Avrocar was the brainchild of maverick aircraft designer Jack Frost. Frost worked with the British aeronautical firm de Havilland during World War II. He pioneered research into supersonic travel and other advanced concepts. In 1947, he signed on with the Canadian-based aviation company Avro Canada, eventually forming a close-knit team of renegade researchers who called themselves the Special Projects Group (SPG). The alone is enough to send conspiracy buffs into a tizzy. Adding to the organization’s mystery is the fact that it worked on highly experimental aircraft designs.
Camera mounted at the front of a streetcar tram riding through Rochdale, UK in 1900. A haunting/evocative look at a day in the life more than 110 years ago! This film is from the Mitchell and Kenyon collection.
This is quite an interesting old film, one of the hundreds made by the Northern partnership of Mitchell and Kenyon recently found in the cellar of a shop.
Travel had grown cheaper by the Edwardian era, and advances like the electric tramway, seen here, offered new and easier ways for tourists to reach the pier. Meanwhile, the beginning of the century saw a reduction in working hours, leading to an explosive growth in the leisure industry. This filmic record highlights the swelling visitors but also proves that the young, the old, men, women and children took full advantage of the Victoria Pier's attractions.
Here's a fascinating footage showing Los Angeles in the late 1940s. Background process plate produced for an unidentified feature film, shot from an automobile driving through Bunker Hill and downtown Los Angeles.
Clogging is a type of folk dance in which the dancer's footwear is used percussively by striking the heel, the toe, or both against a floor or each other to create audible rhythms, usually to the downbeat with the heel keeping the rhythm.
The dance style has recently fused with others including African-American rhythms, and the Peruvian dance “zapateo” (which may in itself be derived from early European clog dances), resulting in the birth of newer street dances, such as tap, locking, jump, hakken, stomping, Gangsta Walking, and the Candy Walk dance.
The use of wooden-soled clogs is rarer in the more modern dances since clog shoes are not commonly worn in urban society, and other types of footwear have replaced them in their evolved dance forms.
Clogging is often considered the first form of street dance because it evolved in urban environments during the industrial revolution.
These scenes of Market Street, still Manchester's busiest shopping area, encapsulate the bustling energy of the city centre in the Edwardian era. The film offers rich insights into various aspects of urban life, including the growing confidence of women, who are shown wandering freely around the city centre.
1901 saw the inauguration of the city's first electric tram route, which would soon replace the horse-drawn method depicted here. Showman A.D. Thomas is seen distributing tickets for the forthcoming travelling film show to pedestrians.
It was the Cold War era. Berlin was divided in two: East and West Berlin. Tensions were high and the then Berlin Wall was a mere barbed wire fence. Two young men were about to make history as one would make a break for it and run to the other side while the other captured it on film.
The iconic photograph of Hans Conrad Schumann escaping East Berlin taken by Peter Leibing.
Here’s the original uncropped version.
On August 15, 1961, 19-year-old photographer Peter Liebing was tipped off by West German police that something would happen upon Bernauer Straße. He had been tipped off as a 19-year-old Conrad Schumann had stood at what would eventually be the Berlin Wall – coils of barbed wire – and pressed down upon it. In a signal to a West German policeman, he gave a sign – the sign to defect.
The situation was dire: as coils of barbed wire were being unrolled, the people of Germany were in uproar, shouting and swearing at police and guards from both side. But upon the Western border, a police van had been stationed opposite the wire, its back door open.
When Liebing arrived, he noticed a young GDR border guard leaning against a wall, smoking cigarette after cigarette, trying to keep calm. Two of his comrades were patrolling the other side of the road. To Liebing, it was unclear which of them would defect, and when. As hours went by, nothing happened, but Liebing continued to be at the ready with his Exacta camera ready to capture whatever would occur.
But at 4pm, Liebing caught the picture which would change Schumann’s life.
“My nerves were at breaking point… I was very afraid. I took off, jumped, and into the car … in three, four seconds it was all over.”
There were many press photographers in attendance at that intersection, but the photo that appeared in all the newspapers the following day was taken by Peter Leibing, who had pre-focused on the barbed wire and pressed the shutter release in just the right "decisive moment" to capture Schumann in mid-leap above the wire, ridding himself of the gun with his right hand and using the left arm for balance.
“I had him in my sight for more than an hour. I had a feeling he was going to jump. It was kind of an instinct... I had learned how to [get the timing right photographing horses] at the Jump Derby in Hamburg. You have to photograph the horse when it leaves the ground and catch it as it clears the barrier. And then he came. I pressed the shutter and it was all over.”
His photo taken with a 200mm lens mounted on —ironically— an East German Exacta camera became an enduring image of the Cold War. There is only one negative; the camera had no motor-drive and it was the only image he had time to shoot.
Below is a rare footage showing the entire “Leap Into Freedom” sequence; likely taken by the videographer that is visible on the left in the uncropped version of Peter Leibing's image.
Schumann was the first of many GDR border guards to defect from East Germany.
East Germany initially wanted to portray his defection as a kidnapping, but as publicity mounted behind a uniformed member of the GDR fleeing his own regime, it became more and more unviable to maintain the story.
In his police report, Schumann provided the West with a valuable insight into the instability behind the East German lines.
In the report, Schumann disclosed that in the days prior to his escape, he had worked endlessly in the attempt to maintain control behind East German lines and got very little sleep as GDR troops were reallocated to East Berlin. In the GDR, he had been told certain things about those in West Germany: that those lingering along the Western Berlin border were criminals, or that the West German police did everything to keep the West Berliners in (such as shooting at them). However, as he stood guard at the border, through his observations Schumann came to realise that what he had been told were falsehoods; there were no conflicts between West Berliners and the police and that the ‘Free Zone’ was indeed free.
Schumann had made some preparations. The Russian MG 42 he had chosen was empty as to help him get over the wire. As he said, had it not been, it probably would have gone off when he dropped it. At 2pm, he assigned tasks to the soldiers under his command, and spread them out so that it wouldn’t look suspicious, but had placed himself closest to the wall. As he said, “Nobody noticed anything.”
After his escape, Schumann remained in a refugee center in Marienfeld, West Berlin until the end of September 1961.
The two other guards, Erich Fierus and Peter Kroger, later stated that had they have caught Schumann in the act, if he had so happened to have gotten caught in the wire, they would have shot him. But with knowledge of what the Stasi were capable of, this would have been one of the kinder options.
Conrad Schumann had become a symbol of freedom during the Cold War.
But life in the GDR was defined by paranoia. With the State Security – also known as the ‘Stasi’ – keeping an eye on everyone and everything, imprisoning those who were merely suspected of antisocial activities and sentencing all those to prison or hard labour, residents of the GDR had everything to fear. It was well known that there were those in the West whom had been kidnapped by the Stasi, and so it was not irrational to think that even though one was in the West, that they could still be a target.
On one side of the Wall, Schumann was a hero. On the other, he was a traitor.
In the West, Schumann was alone. Born in Zschochau, Saxony, Nazi Germany in 1942 and trained as a sheepherder, Schumann had left family and friends behind in the East. The West German Government helped him to build a new life in the West. With his ticket to Bavaria, he started work at a Hospital and trained to become a nurse. However, his first decade in the West sees him fall prone to the bottle to numb the pain, the start of what would be a lifelong battle with alcohol addiction.
Schumann he met his future wife and with her, had a son, Erwin. He bought his first car, a VW Beetle, in 1963 – a far cry away from the eight year waiting list for a Trabant in the GDR. He took up a new job at a winery, and eventually at the Audi car assembly factory in Ingolstadt. Schumann proudly cheered for FC Bayern München, and attended church on Sundays. He got himself tattoos on both arms along the way.
But Schumann had left behind his mother and father, a younger sister. The Stasi, with their eye upon him, record that he wrote exactly every two weeks. When his father had finally received a permit to see him thirteen years after the jump, Schumann discovered that he had been told by the Stasi that he had read contraband materials, and that they had paid him to jump, to which Schumann had accepted. Over the years, Schumann was tempted to return to Saxony, receiving letters from his family saying that everything would be fine if he were to come home. At one point, he had to be persuaded by a West German policeman against what could have been a disastrous outcome, because little did he know but the letters had been written by family, but dictated by the Stasi.
And so despite all pressure from the Stasi, did not return to the GDR. The fear and paranoia plagued his life, and alongside the pressure of his unintentional fame, Schumann led to a lifelong battle with depression and alcoholism. He had remarked, “Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free,” and had considered Bavaria where he felt truly at home.
Despite the fame, Schumann never blamed Liebing for taking the photograph.
Schumann developed a small friendship with Liebing throughout his life as a result of the photograph and met often. Schumann divulged to Liebing in a private talk his reason for defecting: he did not want to be put into the situation where he would have to shoot someone. With one’s upbringing in the GDR being fundamentally driven towards military purpose, it was highly likely that Schumann might eventually have had to.
Twenty years after his jump, Schumann stands in front the iconic photo by Peter Leibing, 1981. (Image: Edwin Reichert/AP)
Schumann later publicly spoke more about his reasons for defection, “As a border policeman I could see how a little girl who was visiting her grandmother in East Berlin was held back by the border guards and not allowed over to West Berlin. Although the parents were waiting just a few meters from the already rolled barbed wire, the girl was simply sent back to East Berlin.”
After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Schumann was reunited with the family he had left behind in East Germany, but it was clear that time had not justified his choice to some.
There were those in his family who still regarded him as a traitor, and refused to talk to him. He had frictions with former colleagues, and was hesitant to visit his parents and siblings back in Saxony.
Conrad Schumann died in 1998 from suicide, and though he left no note, it was widely accepted that he never escaped living a life in fear. He was 56 years old. Schumann was one of the Berlin Wall’s many victims.
Peter Liebing’s photograph of Conrad Schumann, entitled ‘Leap Into Freedom’ was compiled as part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World in 2011.
John Lennon with his son Julian Lennon, wife Yoko Ono and Mick Jagger appear in
this video below.
It’s an outtake of them kidding backstage at the BBC studio where in Dec 1968
The Stones filmed their TV Special
The Rolling Stones' Rock’n’Roll Circus, with guests Marianne Faithfull,
first line-up of Jethro Tull (with Tony Iommi on guitar), The Who, Taj Mahal,
and John Lennon who performed Yer Blues with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards
(on bass) and Mitch Mitchell (drums, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's drummer).
This video was filmed in 1978 at the New York Aikikai dojo. No other details about the highly trained convent are known, besides what is explained in the narration.
“The sisters of The Holy Family serve what is perhaps the most crime-ridden part of Philadelphia,” an unidentified man explains. “Their orphanage is in constant danger of vandalism and burglary. In recent months several of the children have been assaulted and two of the nuns raped. Unwilling to give up after some 80 years of service to the community, the sisters have turned to the Old Testament for a solution: eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Like the oriental monks of the ancient Shaolin monastery, these modern sisters have embraced the martial arts. Their skills are predominantly protective and defensive. But should human life or chastity be at stake, the good sisters are well-prepared for sterner measures.”
Sterner measures is right. Considering the time period, we are very impressed. Watch it below:
The 1930s were difficult years for New York City, as the Great Depression took a toll on the city and its residents. This vintage color footage give us an amazing look back into the City in the late 1930s:
It's a very windy day, and the pedestrians passing by the Flatiron Building are having considerable difficulty in keeping their hats from flying off.
This remarkable picture was taken at the foot of New York's famous skyscraper, The Flatiron, and shows men and women being blown about like chips. One woman is flattened against a shop window and is utterly unable to walk. An extraordinary subject.
The Execution of Mary Stuart is a short film produced in 1895. The film depicts the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
The 18-second-long film was produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark and may have been the first film in history to use trained actors, as well as one of the first to use editing for the purposes of special effects.
The film shows a blindfolded Mary (played by Robert Thomae) being led to the execution block. The executioner raises his axe and an edit occurs during which the actress is replaced by a mannequin. The mannequin's head is chopped off and the executioner holds it in the air as the film ends.
Back in 1978 Temple shot most of the scenes in a variety of locations, ranging from the highly touristy Rue de Rivoli, to quieter lower class areas. As a filmmaker Temple enjoyed filming his actors in real 'rough' places and ancient Paris was full of weird streets looking unchanged since the 19th century.
Shooting scenes in Paris with an actor wearing a swastika shirt wasn’t allowed and is still not allowed; the same for an actor dressed up like a policeman. Filming needs official authorization and even if the Swindle footage may look like it was shot 'on the run', Julien Temple had to get official permission for filming.
The many tales about the filming taking place in the Jewish area of the city is simply not true. Nothing was filmed in the Jewish area of Paris.
A great invention from 1927 shows a novel vehicle in Paris where the front wheel enables automobiles to turn in own length and sidle in and out of any parking place.
Parking item about a novel vehicle in Paris. The car faces camera and the wheels turn at 90 degrees. This looks very comical and cartoon like. The car manouevres in and out of a tiny parking space by pivoting the wheels - marvellous The car drives off. There is then a high angle shot of the car as it turns 360 degrees in a cobbled yard A girl with hat sits in back.
Note :The girl may say 'take me for a spin' but this is ridiculous. Its a lovely item, comical and the car is very much like the UK children's programme 'Brum'.
Andre the Giant was known as Géant Ferré during this time. The footage shows a 19 year old Andre in France being interviewed and doing some wrestling training.
If historical records are correct then that means this video was shot during Andre’s first year in the business and about 7 years before he would make his debut in the World Wide Wrestling Federation.
The "Dancing Man" is the name given to the man who was filmed dancing on the street in Sydney, Australia, after the end of World War II. On 15 August 1945, a reporter took note of a man's joyful expression and dance and asked him to do it again. The man consented and was caught on motion picture film in an Australian edition of the newsreel Movietone News. The film and stills from it have taken on iconic status in Australian history and culture, and symbolise joyous elation to war's end.
There has been much debate as to the identity of the dancing man. Frank McAlary, a retired barrister claims that he was the man photographed pirouetting in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, on 15 August 1945. A Queen's Counsel, Chester Porter, and a former Compensation Court judge, Barry Egan, both claim to have seen Mr. McAlary being filmed dancing. The television programme Where Are They Now, produced by Australia's Seven Network, attempted to solve the mystery of the dancing man's identity. The network hired a forensic scientist who examined the film reel and picture and came to the conclusion that it was indeed McAlary.
McAlary recalled later in an interview that it was a "very spontaneous affair. Chester Porter, myself and Barry Egan [a former Compensation Court judge] and his wife came out of the Law School building [in Elizabeth Street] and were standing there on the edge of the crowd and a Cinesound truck was going along filming and Chester Porter said, 'give 'em a show, Frank'. So I said ok and I jumped out and did a series of twists and turns, and as I was doing them I suddenly thought, my God, my master solicitor will see this if it gets on the newsreels and I'll be in trouble. So I darted off into the crowd. That's really all that ever happened".
The Royal Australian Mint, however, chose to portray Ern Hill as the dancing man on a 2005 issue $1 coin commemorating 60 years since the World War II armistice. Mr. Hill has made a statement that, "The camera came along and I did a bit of a jump around." The coin, sculpted by Wojciech Pietranik, does not bear any name.
Australian 2005 $1 coin Peace Dancing Man.
Rebecca Keenan of Film World Pty. Ltd., says the dancer may be Patrick Blackall. Mr. Blackall has claimed, "I'm the genuine dancing man," and has signed statutory declarations that he is the man in the film. These remain not alone as many others maintain a claim to the moment, it is not conclusive and may never be.
Frank A. Epton, a retired Chartered Accountant living in Alstonville, NSW before he died in February 2013, claimed that he was one of the soldiers in the background of the still image of the dancing man (the soldier without a hat). Papers and photos found in his possession during the administration of his estate support his assertion.
In the years since this newsreel was first shown, the mystery surrounding the dancer’s name has compounded the fascination with this audiovisual record. Even now, his identity remains in dispute and a number of men over the years have claimed to be the figure in the newsreel. But whatever the genesis of this scene, it illustrates how resonant icons can make historic news events timeless and, in doing so, embed themselves into the national consciousness.
View from automobile driving down city sidewalk, daytime; large city in Japan in the late 1940s. Shot passes by shops and many pedestrians, who look at camera.
