Credit: De Boulevard van Scheveningen, Eye Filmmuseum
BFI National Archive and Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam) have collaborated on their production The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902), a new 52-minute compilation of newly-restored and incredibly rare large format, 68mm images, reflecting the essence of early film. BFI refers to the format as “the IMAX films of their day.”
The Brilliant Biograph, which premiered at international festivals including the Pordenone Silent Film Festival earlier this year, is free to view online on BFI Player.
The new compilation offers viewers a dazzling tour of Europe at the turn of the century, with enchanting scenes of Venice, Berlin, Amsterdam and London, capturing the first-ever moving images of important events including Queen Wilhelmina’s coronation, the launch of the transatlantic liner RMS Oceanic, famous locations such as Venice’s Grand Canal, Pompeii, and the Place de la Concorde in Paris, as well as spectacular performances by acrobats, dance troupes and an impressive display of firepower from the Battleship Odin as well as beautiful moving images of natural phenomena and street views of daily life.
Funding by the European Commission’s ‘European Tribute to Film Heritage’ programme allowed for the high quality 8k digitisation of 50 selected large-format films made in Europe between 1897 and 1902, drawn from the Eye Filmmuseum collection in cooperation with BFI who supplied some of their recently restored Victorian titles for this compilation.
The selection was partly inspired by the large-format film restoration methodology developed by the BFI National Archive and Haghefilm for the BFI’s Great Victorian Moving Picture Show, which premiered at the 2018 BFI London Film Festival.
The films in The Brilliant Biograph were all shot using the unique large-format 68mm Mutograph camera. At four times the size of 35mm, the 68mm format provides extraordinarily high-resolution images. The restoration of these films is particularly challenging as their 68mm super-large, unperforated format has to be scanned frame by frame but the rewards are exceptional. These one-minute time capsules still convey some of the richest and sharpest images that film can achieve.
Bryony Dixon, BFI National Archive Curator said, “The international community of film archives has a spirit of collaboration that should be the envy of international governments and which enables us to do fabulous projects like the Biograph film restorations working with our colleagues at the EYE Filmmuseum. These pin sharp large-format films connect us with intense immediacy to the Europe of the 19th century as it turned into the 20th; an interconnected network of cultures as vibrant then as it is now.”
Commented Frank Roumen, Director of Collections at Eye Filmmuseum: “Eye Filmmuseum is delighted to cooperate with the BFI on The Brilliant Biograph. In preparing the film we were able to benefit from the expertise of our BFI colleagues. As Eye was permitted to restore some of the BFI Mutoscope and Biograph Company nitrate films and further allowed to use some of the M&B films that were already digitally restored on 8k by the BFI in 2018, the compilation film became even more vibrant and lively.”
The Mutoscope and Biograph Collection at Eye Filmmuseum is the largest existing collection of these early large-format films in the world, including over 200 titles. Other major collections of these 68mm films are held by the BFI National Archive and MoMA in New York.
The BFI National Archive was founded in 1935 and has grown to become the one of the largest and most important collections of film and television in the world with over 180,000 films and 750,000 television programmes.
Eye Filmmuseum is the only museum for film and the art of the moving image in the Netherlands. The Eye collection contains more than 50,000 Dutch and international films, and a wide variety of posters, photographs, film equipment, books and personal archives, among them the celebrated UNESCO World Heritage Collection of film pioneer Jean Desmet. Eye preserves, restores and presents films of all sorts — from classics, blockbusters and early avant-garde works to the very latest experiments in virtual reality.
