The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913 (5 DVD)

Various directors. U.S./Western Europe. 1894-1913. Total time: approx. 380 mins. (6+ hours) B&W, Color. various musical accompaniment.

The Great Train Robbery & Other Primary Works
Directors: Edweard Muybridge, Edwin S. Porter, Thomas Edison
Country: (various)
Year: 1893-1907
This survey of the cinema's earliest landmarks and rarities features the 1877 motion studies of Edward Muybridge, the early productions of Thomas Edison's Black Maria, the actualites of Louis Lumiére, George Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902), and climaxes with the premiere of a mint-condition print of Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, complete with the authentic hand-tinting witnessed by audiences of 1903.

Comedy, Spectacle, and New Horizons
Director: (various)
Country: (various)
Year: 1893-1913
This edition explores the establishment of cinematic genres in the first years of the 20th Century, offering rare glimpses of the innovative visual comedy of Max Linder, the pioneering Italian epic NERO - or THE BURNING OF ROME, the phenomenal animation of Windsor McCoy, the social realism of Alice Guy Blaché's MAKING OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, D. W. Griffith's early melodrama A GIRL AND HER TRUST, and more! .

The European Pioneers
Director: (various)
Country: (various)
Year: 1895-1906
From the archives of the British Film Institute, this collection features forty distinctive works from cinema's infancy, produced by such Euro pioneers as R.W. Paul, George Edward Smith, Fran Mottershaw, Walter Haggar & Sons, and James Bamforth, as well as by acknowledged innovators like the Lumière brothers and Méliès. Includes Demolition of a Wall (1896), Exiting the Factory (1895), and Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (circa 1895).

Experimentation and Discovery
Director: (various)
Country: (various)
Year: 1898-1910
EXPERIMENTATION AND DISCOVERY (vol. 3 of THE MOVIES BEGIN) Dir. (various). U.S. and Europe. 1898-1910. Color-tinted, B&W. Frequently comical, often risque, and sometimes just plain baffling, the twenty films of this anthology challenged the precepts of the visual representation of narrative, thereby inventing the photographic and editing techniques that would quickly become accepted as cinematic syntax. Includes Peeping Tom (1901), History of a Crime (1901), How It Feels to be Run Over (1900), and The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906).

The Magic of Melies
Director: Georges Méliès
Country: France
Year: 1904-1908
Tribute is paid to the screen's first special effects wizard in this special collection of marvelously restored prints. In addition to more than a dozen of his early trompes l'oeil - such as Untamable Wiskers, Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer, and The Mermaid - this volume boasts the illuminating documentary, Georges Méliès, Cinema Magician and a rare hand-tinted print of the fantastic spectacle An Impossible Voyage.