“I’ve got to check the maths before the show, but basically one turn of the crank transports eight frames to the machine, which by my calculations means I’ll have to crank the projector 6,500 times for the show. It’s much better than going to the gym!” laughs Christopher Bird.
On Saturday, May 21, award-winning film editor and David Cleveland, founder of the East Anglian Film Archive in Norwich, will be taking cinemagoers on a trip back in time to celebrate the re-opening of one of the oldest surviving picture houses in the country.
The Electric Palace at Harwich started welcoming back audiences in April, following a fundraising appeal to restore the Grade II listed building to its former glory.
And to recreate the experience, the films will be shown on the cinema’s original screen, using a hand cranked projector, with improvised piano accompaniment.
As Christopher explains, the venue plays an important role in the history of cinema-going.
“The Electric Palace is one of the oldest surviving cinemas in the country and it’s actually the oldest one that’s in its original state,” he says.
“And we wanted to put on a show as close as we can to roughly how it would have been if you went to the movies at that cinema 111 years ago.
“So, we’re using films of the time and we’re putting them on with an original Gaumont hand-cranked projector of the period.”
Christopher is thrilled that they’re going to be joined by silent film accompanist John Sweeney, who will be adding another layer of authenticity to the evening.
“He’s one of the best in the world, so we’re really lucky to have him,” says Christopher.
“He has not seen the films he is going to play for, which is authentic, they often wouldn’t have time to rehearse, so he will be actually making up his score live as he watches the film.
“And we’re projecting on to the actual, original screen from 1911, which is basically just a rear wall of the building, painted white, so maybe – I can’t prove this, but I suspect – it is the oldest cinema screen in the world.”
The programme includes two films which were shown at the first ever show at the Electric Palace, on November 29, 1911 – The Battle of Trafalgar and Harry the Footballer.
Back then, films would be around 10 minutes long.
Most of the films come from Christopher’s own collection and also include French trick film Good Simon, Bad Simon, comedy That Fatal Sneeze, and what is believed to be the only known footage of the Titanic.
“We have a Pathe newsreel from 1912, which includes, I think it’s the only footage of the actual Titanic. You sometimes see other newsreel footage of what purports to be the Titanic, but is actually made after the event and is of her sister ship the Olympic,” says Christopher.
Back in 1911, cinema was still in its infancy, but the films show how skilled and inventive film-makers had already become, despite their rudimentary equipment.
“We have a wonderful French trick film, Good Simon, Bad Simon, which uses all sorts of clever camera trickery, in order for a man to play his own doppelganger and then murder his doppelganger,” he says.
“The level of technical skill required to pull it off, even now, even if you were to show it to a modern effects artist they would still be impressed by this film. I work as a film editor myself and I’m amazed at the skill with which they’re doing this on incredibly basic, wooden hand cranked cameras.”
As Christopher explains, The Battle of Trafalgar was hard to find.
“This is supposed to be a lost film, but we managed to find a copy. Sadly, this is the only film we’re not running on the proper projector, because we could only get hold of it on 16mm from a German film archive,” he says.
And the closing film, That Fatal Sneeze, is another rarity.
“It was made by a very early British pioneering film maker called Cecil Hepworth. That’s rather special because almost all of Cecil Hepworth’s films were destroyed when he went bankrupt in 1924 and the receiver melted them all down. This is a rare survivor.”
Again, it’s another brilliant example of the ingenuity of early film makers.
“There’s a bit where this guy does an enormous sneeze and the idea is that’s it’s so big that it knocks the camera around,” says Christopher.
“The camera’s been mounted on to a pendulum so that it can rock drunkenly from left to right, just for this one joke. The amount of work they’ve had to do just to set up this one gag and invent a whole new form of mounting the camera to achieve it, and this is in 1909, it’s mind boggling, I think.”
Christopher says that the results of the Electric Palace’s renovation are “absolutely extraordinary”.
As he explains, cinemas had only started to be built in 1909, because of the Cinematograph Act. Before then, cinema was a fairground attraction. However early film was highly flammable, so the idea was to create purpose-built film theatres, which had many more safety precautions in place.
“You get that sense of wonderment - it’s a miracle that it survived,” says Christopher.
His love of early film came from watching the Charlie Chaplin and restored feature films which were shown on television when he was growing up.
“I loved the freshness and inventiveness of them,” he says.
Another influence was his Night At The Movies co-curator, David Cleveland.
“David Cleveland was an early hero of mine. He’s the son of a Norfolk farmer, he doesn’t come from a film-making background,” says Christopher.
“He became a projectionist and then went to the BBC and did a traineeship in the 60s, and then made dazzlingly inventive little comedy films for television, not unlike some of the films we’re going to be running at this show - they’re descendants of them in a way.
“And then he founded the first ever regional film archive in Britain.”
After university, Christopher worked on restorations of silent films himself, including the 1927 film Napoleon.
As a film editor and director, his work has won awards including an international Emmy and a Rose d’Or and he is a visiting tutor at the National Film and Television School.
Most recently he has been film editor on the BBC series, Dodger, with his long-time collaborator, writer and director Rhys Thomas.
They met when Rhys Thomas was making a two-part documentary about Queen - Christopher has been involved in six documentaries about the band, both as film editor and director.
They went on to work together on a series of starry spoof music documentaries featuring the fictional prog rock legend Brian Pern.
Dodger, which stars Christopher Eccleston and follows the exploits of the Artful Dodger and Fagin’s gang, started out on CBBC, before moving to BBC One. It’s designed to be a show the whole family gathers on the sofa to watch together, like Doctor Who.
A second series is currently in pre-production - and Christopher reveals that East Anglia played a surprising role in the show.
Rhys Thomas has a home in Norfolk – and they worked on the edit in his shed.
“Obviously I’m biased, but I’m extremely proud of Dodger,” says Christopher. “It was a complete dream to make. It was basically 15-hour days Rhys’s shed in Harleston. It was so much fun to do and I can’t wait to do more.”
Christopher lives in London, but his links to East Anglia go right back to his childhood.
“My family have had a boat on the Norfolk Broads since the late 20s, early 30s, so I would always spend two months of the year on the Broads,” he says.
His mother is a historian and her life’s work has been researching and writing an eight-volume book about 18th and early 19th century farmer and brewer Mary Hardy, based on her diary.
Fascinated by the Norfolk landscape (he hopes to move to the county one day), Christopher also wrote a book, Silent Sentinels, about its First and Second World War anti-invasion defences.
And it was during a holiday in the area as a child that he saw David Cleveland for the first time.
“When I was 11, I went to a magic lantern show put on by David Cleveland on the last day of the school holidays, in Lowestoft, I think. It was the first time I came across him and I was enchanted by the magic of that show. So, it’s a great privilege to be putting on a show together 33 years later.”
A Night At The Movies, 1911 is at the Electric Palace, Harwich, on Saturday, May 21 at 7.30pm. To find out more and book tickets, visit electricpalace.com
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