THE FINAL REIGN OF ONE-REEL FILMS

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 program will spotlight a selection of short films reflecting a typical night at the movies 100 years ago, just as longer “feature-length” films of three or more reels were beginning to emerge more frequently. Movie stars, filmmaking techniques and genres had blossomed to create a bustling business for the young and rapidly expanding motion picture phenomenon, with 1913 becoming a turning point for movies as we have come to know them.

Films will include “Suspense,” a split-screen tour-de-force directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley; “Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life,” featuring Mabel Normand and Mack

Sennett; “The Lady and the Mouse,” directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish; “The Evidence of the Film,” a picture from Thanhouser of New Rochelle, New York, featuring a crime that is solved by a film editor; and highlights from several feature-length films including “Traffic in Souls,” a sensational movie exploiting the fear of “white-slave” trafficking.

The Academy celebrates the year 1913 and its developmental contributions to motion pictures with a program of selected films in “A Century Ago: The Films of 1913.” Most prints will be in 35mm and are drawn from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute, EYE Film Institute Netherlands, the Archives françaises du film and the Library of Congress.