The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902)

The Mutoscope and Biograph Collection is the oldest film collection held at Eye Filmmuseum. It includes over 200 films, most of which made in Europe between 1897 and 1902. This constitutes the largest existing collection of Mutoscope and Biograph films surviving in the world.

time capsules

These films are all photographed with the unique large-format 68mm Mutograph camera, which provided extraordinarily high-resolution images. These one-minute time capsules from 120 years ago still convey some of the richest and sharpest images that film can achieve.

The films reflect the essence of early cinema: capturing the first-ever moving images of important events, famous locations and personalities, as well as spectacular moments such as dance and sports performances, or even natural phenomena like fire or storm, that only work when seen in motion.

high quality

Eye Filmmuseum appreciates the funding from the European Commission”s “European Tribute to Film Heritage” program, which allowed digitizing 50 selected films from the Eye and BFI collections, in high quality (8K).

With an especially composed score by Daan van den Hurk.

The project's making-of is screened as a prefilm (8')