Edison Shorts -- 1894-1897

This was included in a collection of other old films from this era. The Edison Shorts include the following:

The Kiss - 1896
Serpentine Dances - 1895
Sandow (Strong Man) - 1894
Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing) - 1894
Cock Fight - 1896
The Barber Shop - 1894
Feeding the Doves - 1896
Seminary Girls - 1897

These basically show exactly as the title suggests, and they all were very short (most a minute or less). All of them were a single shot with the camera probably mounted on a tripod. There was no zoom, pan or anything else beyond what the camera saw from its perch.

These kind of look like someone's home videos or what a photographer might shoot with his still camera, except that the pictures are moving. It kind of indicates that the original idea was to use it as a traditional camera, but to give the end user a feeling of life in his pictures instead of trying to capture life in a still. The advent of storytelling in this medium was a few years off still. 

The final one in the list (Seminary Girls), like Eadweard's sequential pictures, point to the seedier side of the art form with a bunch of girls in their nightgowns engaging in a pillow fight. It appears Edison had a bit fo a dirty old man streak as well, and one might wonder what he has in his "private" collection.

This is on "The Movies Begin Vol. 1".

Lumiere Films - 1895-1896

Swimming in the Sea 
Children Digging for Clams
Loading a Boiler
Dragoons Crossing the Saone 
Promenade of Ostriches 
Childish Quarrel 
Lion, London Zoological Gardens
Photograph
Transformation by Hats
Carmaux:Drawing out The Coke
Poultry Yard
Arab Cortege, Geneva
New York: Brooklyn Bridge
New York: Broadway and Union Sq
Policemen's Parade, Chicago

Another collection of older, very short films yielded pretty much as the title clearly states in all cases. The camera appears to have been positioned on a tripod to watch what is going on and it all plays out very much like a still photographer's photo gallery, but with the pictures moving. Two of them, however, deserve some special distinction.

Photograph - this one appears to be more staged than filming actual events. A photographer poses another man for a picture, and the man has trouble posing, then they knock the camera over, breaking it apparently. It's very comic and slapstick-ish.

Transformation by Hats - this one has a man who changes his appearance (including his face) by changing hats with some built on masks. He does an effective job and it took a moment to realize exactly what was going on. It was an effective demonstration of how some minor work that would later be attributed to makeup would appear on screen.

It was a fascinating collection to view. This is on "The Movies Begin Vol. 1"