1911 |
Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
January 10 |
First photograph from an aeroplane is taken by Major Jimmie Erickson over San Diego, California. |
|
early |
West’s Pictures buys the Australian branch of Pathé Frères. |
|
February |
W G Barker's hour-long Henry VIII, starring Sir Robert Tree, Arthur Bourchier and Violet Vanbrugh, is offered on an 'exclusivity' basis—hired to exhibitors with a short-term geographical monopoly—an early instance of 'barring'. |
|
February |
Charles Urban leases the Scala Theatre in London to exhibit Kinemacolor films. |
|
March |
Amalgamated Picture Company formed in Melbourne, Australia by merger of industrial chemical company Johnson and Gibson with J & N Tait, following their collaboration on production of The Story of the Kelly Gang. |
|
April |
In San Francisco, William Wadsworth Hodkinson, regional representative of the MPPC's General Film Company, implements a scheme whereby independent producers receive a cash advance for new productions in return for granting exclusive rights to distribute the films. The distributor may even pay the cost of prints and advertising (P&A). This is intended to replace the so-called 'states rights' system of producers selling prints outright (typically at $0.10 per foot) to any exhibitor, who can screen copies until unusable within a specified territory.
This marks the beginning of the separation of production, distribution and exhibition. |
|
June 15 |
Computing Scale Company of America, The Tabulating Machine Company and The International Time Recording Company of New York merge to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). |
> 1924 |
June 19 |
Pennsylvania establishes the first state film censorship board in the US. |
|
August |
US release of first ‘feature’ film (ie, with running time of more than one hour): Italian production of Dante’s Inferno. |
|
August 8 |
First edition of Pathé Weekly is screened in the US. |
|
August 11 |
Première of first German feature-length film, In dem grossen Augenblick, directed by Urban Gad and starring Asta Nielsen and Hugo Hink. |
|
August 17 |
The Incorporated Association of Kinematograph Manufacturers (KMA) is formed in England as a limited company. |
> 1912 |
September 4 |
Release of first Danish feature-length film, Den sorte Drøm (The black dream), directed by Urban Gad for Deutsche Bioscop and starring Asta Nielsen and Valdemar Psilander. |
|
• |
The Danish film Den hvide slavehandel II (The white slave trade II), directed by August Blom for Nordisk Film has a release print copy depth of 260. |
|
September 30 |
Gaumont opens its renovated 3,400-seat Gaumont-Palais cinema on the Place Clichy in Paris, the largest cinema in Europe, triggering the era of building cinema palaces in France. |
|
• |
Alhambra Platz cinema with 2,000 seats opens in Berlin. |
|
November |
Mutoscope production of Charles the Great has a running time of four days. |
|
November 7 |
A A Campbell-Swinton, in his presidential address to the Röntgen Society in London, suggests that high-definition television is possible with cathode ray tubes. The paper is not published until April 1924 in Wireless World. |
|
November 9 |
Parisian Georges Claude applies for a patent for neon signs. |
|
December 12 |
The coronation durbar of King George V is the subject of the first major colour film production, The Durbar at Delhi, shot in Kinemacolor. |
> 1912 |
December |
Australian federal government appoints a Commonwealth Cinematographer to make official film records and promotional films. |
|
• |
Pathé opens a production studio in the US. |
|
• |
London has 94 cinemas with 55,000 seats, averaging 585 seats per screen. |
> 1931 |
• |
First film studio in Sweden, built for Svenska Bio opens at Lidingö. |
|
• |
Finland has 17 cinemas in Helsinki, 81 in the whole country. |
|
• |
Gladys Sylvani, an actress at Hepworth’s Walton-on-Thames studios, is mentioned in promotion for Stolen Letters, premiered on 24 December. She is believed to be the first named ‘film star’. |
|
• |
Theatrical star Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree appears as Cardinal Wolsey in Will Barker’s two-reeler production of Henry VIII, being paid £1,000 a day. Music for the film is by Edward German, the first time a reputed composer has written music for a British film. |
|
• |
UK Copyright Act first mentions cinematograph film. |
|
• |
First publication of two popular film magazines: Photoplay, founded in Chicago by James Quirk and containing promotional stories based on recent film releases, and Motion Picture Story, founded by J Stuart Blackton. |
|
• |
Moy Gyro, invented in England for aerial reconnaissance photography, is the first 35mm film camera designed to be hand-held. It includes an electrically driven gyroscope 'to overcome nervous movements of the operator'. Two other 'firsts' are an internal electric motor with portable battery and pre-loaded internal film magazines. |
|
• |
Adolph Zukor forms Engadine Corporation, to distribute imported French and Italian films in the USA. |
> 1912 |
• |
Rob Roy, directed by Arthur Vivian for producer James Bowie, is the first three-reel movie made in Scotland. |
|
• |
First dated film made in Greece: Quo Vadis Spiridion, directed by Spiros Dimitracopoulos. |
|
• |
Rudolph Fischer advances du Hauron’s ideas for a triple-layer colour film by proposing inclusion of chemicals in each layer that would react during processing to form images of dyed reduced silver. The experimental substances prove to be water-soluble and produce diffused images of poor colour fidelity. |
|
• |
John Logie Baird may already be conducting experiments in television in Glasgow and Alexandria, Scotland; certainly he is involved in experiments by 1915. |
|
• |
Marcel Proust, lying in bed at home, hears Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande live from the Opéra Comique in Paris via the Théâtrophone service. |
|
• |
First Lord Astor buys The Observer from Lord Northcliffe; Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) first invests in the Daily Express. |
|