A Century Ago: The Films of 1912

PRESENTED ON A 1909 HAND-CRANKED POWER’S MODEL 6 CAMERAGRAPH MOTION PICTURE MACHINE, RESTORED AND CRANKED BY JOE RINAUDO.
 
FEATURING LIVE MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT BY MICHAEL MORTILLA.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrated the year 1912 and its developmental contributions to motion pictures with a program of selected films in "A Century Ago: The Films of 1912." The program spotlighted dynamic competition between established studios and up-and-coming producers like Carl Laemmle of Universal and Adolph Zukor of Famous Players (which would eventually become Paramount). The development of cinematic language through faster editing, more advanced staging and production design, and a move from one-reel stories to feature-length formats made 1912 a particularly distinguished year.

The program included newsreel footage of 1912 Los Angeles; "A Cure for Pokeritis" (Vitagraph), starring John Bunny; "Broncho Billy and the Schoolmistress" (Essanay), starring G.W. Anderson; "An Unseen Enemy" (Biograph), starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish; "At Coney Island" (Keystone), starring Mabel Normand; and "The Titanic," produced shortly after the ship sank a century ago.

Most prints were in 35mm and were drawn from the collections of the Academy Film Archive, the British Film Institute, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the EYE Filmmuseum, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.