Viaggio in Caucaso e Persia
R / K / P: Mario Piacenza. It 1910
Print: Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino
Ital. and Engl. intertitles

“With the advent of cinema, and travel films in particular, the world suddenly seemed to shrink at dizzying speed. Mario Piacenza (1884-1957), a textile manufacturer from Biella, in Piedmont, with a passion for mountaineering, travel, and photography, was an exemplar of this ruling class, firmly rooted in its own region and at the same time involved in a dynamic and romantic expansion into the outside. In 1910, when he filmed the scenes of Viaggio in Caucaso e Persia, Mario Piacenza was 26, and shared with his brother Guido (1881-1939), himself a famous balloonist, the management of their thriving family wool business as well as a love of mountain climbing. Although the Matterhorn would always remain Mario’s favourite mountain, that summer he planned an expedition to a more exotic destination: the Caucasus Mountains, most of whose peaks were still unexplored.”
Museo Nazionale del Cinema

“In July of 1910 Mario Piacenza (…) set out on a journey to the Caucasus and Persia, along with Gino Galeotti, Giuseppe Levi and three Valle d’Aosta guides. The expedition ended in mid-November.
The scenes shot on this solitary journey teem with life. More than landscapes or local colour, what strikes the modern viewer is the portrayal of people, their actions, their gaze, and above all their rapport with the foreign eye of the film camera. The inhabitants of an entire village pose outside their mud homes; the bustle of traffic animates the broad streets of Tbilisi, overlooking the river with its mills, and the cheeky face of a little boy stares defiantly into the lens; politicians in Teheran make their stately entry into a Parliament opened only four years earlier, while veiled women walk cautiously, concealed from the eyes of the world; the chaos of the markets in Bukhara and Samarkand tells an intricate web of micro-stories, amid a riot of fabrics that cries out for colour film. Though spontaneous in their capture of unexpected moments, the footage frequently displays Piacenza’s instinct for formal composition and a particular taste for slow, contemplative panoramas. His shots of the oil wells in Baku, for instance, reveal an unforgettable landscape that seems almost the skyline of another planet.
The reconstruction of the film was carried out by Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino in 2017.”
Vimeo

The film restoration:
The reconstruction was based on positive and negative nitrate fragments, unedited and without intertitles, conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin. The main sources used to establish the editing order of the shots and to prepare the texts of the intertitles were the letters written by Mario Piacenza on his travels, now held by the Fondazione Piacenza in Pollone.
Museo Nazionale del Cinema

More films by the Piacenza Brothers on this website:
>>> Climbing and Shooting
>>> Up the River Congo, 1912

Mario Piacenza

The Two Brothers
R: Theodore Wharton (?). P: Pathé Frères / American Kinema. USA 1912
Print: EYE
Dutch titles, Engl. subtitles

“In 1904 the French company Pathé Frères already opened a sales agency in New York. Soon the French films flooded the United States. During the nickelodeon peak of 1907, Pathé opened a factory in Bound Brook, New Jersey, to make positive distribution prints from negatives sent from France. (…) In 1910 Pathé also opened in Bound Brook its own film studio, which focused on making westerns, dramas, and comedies catered to American tastes. Under the name of American Kinema, however, these films were also spread worldwide.

Louis Gasnier, a jack-of-all-trades who had launched comedian Max Linder at Pathé’s French studio, and had set up Pathé’s Italian production branch Film d’Arte Italiana in Rome, went to New York with Charles Pathé himself in 1910 and became the managing director of the Bound Brook studio. He also directed its first film, The Girl from Arizona (1910), though, as far as direction at American Kinema is known, more films around 1910-1912 were produced and directed by Theodore Wharton, and by Native American James Young Deer, who acted in many of his films as well, together with his wife Red Wing. Several distribution prints of the American Kinema early westerns have been found in the Dutch Desmet Collection, such as Abernathy Kids’ Rescue (1911), The Cheyenne’s Bride (1911), The Two Brothers (1912), and The Mystery of Lonely Gulch (1911).

In 1912 Pathé opened a second studio at Jersey City, much closer to New York, and also closer to the Fort Lee production center of early cinema. It was also one of the most modern ones of its time, with its arc lights and mercury-vapor tubes, instead of natural light coming in through glass roofs and sides. Regular actors with Pathé in those years were Paul Panzer, Octavia Handworth, and Crane Wilbur, while future stars Pearl White, Henry B. Walthall, and Jack Pickford had their first film parts here. By 1910, Pathé also leased an outdoor studio in Edendale, Los Angeles, for the production of westerns. Louis Gasnier would become known for his production of popular serials, first of all, the 20 episodes serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) with Pearl White, Crane Wilbur, Paul Panzer. (…)”
Sources: Richard Abel ed., Encyclopedia of Early Cinema; Richard Lewis Ward, When the Cock Crows: A History of the Pathé Exchange.
flickr

>>> Pathé in the States – 02

The Arrest of Goudie
P: Mitchell & Kenyon. UK 1901

“Sagar Mitchell, James Kenyon and their company Mitchell & Kenyon (founded in 1897) would be very minor footnotes in British film history were it not for the miraculous preservation and discovery of 800 of the company’s nitrate negatives, discovered in 1994 in the basement of a building formerly owned by the company.
Operating from Blackburn, Lancashire, they specialised in ‘local films for local people’, and marketed and shown in fairgrounds on the promise that customers might see themselves on the screen. To this end, they made dozens of ‘factory gate’ films (with the aim of maximising the number of clearly visible people), as well as records of other events taking place across the north of England: sporting fixtures, marches, parades, street scenes, and so on. They also shot dramatised re-enactments of then-current events such as the Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion.
The Arrest of Goudie (1901) is regarded as the world’s first crime reconstruction on film, and was screened only three days after the real Thomas Goudie was arrested for fraud. A typical Mitchell & Kenyon programme would consist of two hours’ worth of films, often enhanced by a live-performance element such as a spoken commentary or sound effects. The number of films produced began to decline from 1907, and the last known example dates from 1913, although the company remained in business until 1922. After Kenyon’s death, Mitchell carefully stored the company’s negatives in three large metal drums, which helped preserve them in remarkable condition.”
BFI Education

“Bootle banker Thomas Peterson Goudie was arrested for colossal frauds on the Bank of Liverpool on December 2, 1901. (…) The original black and white footage was shown at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Liverpool just three days after Goudie was detained. His path to criminality is said to have stemmed from occasionally betting on horses, which set him on the path to destruction. By November 1899 he was behind with rent, owing money to a lender. He forged a cheque in the hope of paying off debts – using the remainder to win back money to replace the deficit at the bank. One of the accounts in Goudie’s charge belonged to Robert William Hudson, the son of the founder of Hudson’s Soap manufacturers. Hudson drew cheques for vast amounts and Goudie chose this as the cover for his crimes.

By October 1900, Goudie had stolen £2,100 and was drawing up another cheque for £600. He spent a few days at Newmarket races, where he lost £543. The pattern would continue as his gambling addiction grew. On November 21, 1901 Goudie was confronted by the bank after they found irregularities with his ledgers. After the initial conversation, Goudie went to ‘fetch a book’, and never returned. Lodging with a couple, Charles and Elizabeth Harding in Berry Street, Bootle, Goudie was arrested after suspicions were raised about his behaviour. Mrs Harding went to Bootle police station and after 10 days on the run, Goudie was arrested. His trial lasted five days and Goudie received 10 years with hard labour.”
Liverpool Echo

>>> Mitchell & Kenyon on this website