Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Paul (York Road 1)

1897
Silent

A clear view of the head of the procession at Westminster

This high-angled shot, taken from the corner of Westminster's York Road, shows the head of the Jubilee procession, led by the statuesque Captain Ames, the tallest officer in the British Army. Though the relatively tight shot can't begin to show the scale of the events, thanks to the camera's elevation we do get an unobstructed view of the mounted troops, headed up by the Life Guards, as they pass.

RW Paul had three cameras placed in different positions along the route: one at the corner of York Road, and one each on the north and south sides of St Paul's Churchyard. The last of these was operated by Paul himself; the cameraman who shot this footage is unknown.

Robert Paul: Giant of Early Film

The most prolific filmmaker of the pioneer period of British film

The multi-talented Robert Paul (1869-1943) was the first British filmmaker to project film for a paying audience, in 1896. A contemporary of the Lumiere brothers, Paul had been producing film, in partnership with Birt Acres, for his own brand of Kinetoscope viewer since April 1895. Shortly after, he began producing for his Theatrograph and Animatographe machines, enjoying a long run at the Alhambra in Leicester Square. As an engineer, Paul made a number of significant innovations - such as an intermittent mechanism for efficiently projecting film. But he also made key innovations in film language, such as the first two-shot fiction film, Come Along Do! (1898). To cap it all, he was a shrewd businessman, with an instinctive grasp of audience tastes.