Series of programmes about the pioneers of moving pictures, with footage from some of the earliest known films.

This episode of the Granada TV series Moving Pictures looks at the very earliest British pioneers starting with Birt Acres who made the first British films with Robert Paul. It goes on to cover the main types of filmmaking and the filmmakers; George Albert Smith, James Williamson, Cecil Hepworth, Mitchell and Kenyon, Goodwin Norton, Frank Mottershaw, and James Bamforth.

There are one or two inaccuracies in the titling but it's a good survey of early British film for the time, despite postulating, somewhat strangely, that British filmmakers 'threw away' the opportunity to get in at the birth of the new medium because they thought 'film was too unpredictable'.

The programme is narrated by Gus Macdonald and with music by the great film composer George Fenton.