Gordon Highlanders Leaving for the Boer War

Aberdeen
1899
Silent

A rambunctious crowd greets the Highlanders in Aberdeen, some more interested in the camera than the soldiers.

Union Terrace, Aberdeen: the William Wallace statue surveys a rambunctious crowd as they greet the Scottish infantry regiment the Gordon Highlanders. Something of a cross between the popular 'factory gate' films and those of troops embarking, the kids jostling to get in front of the camera are fully aware that their faces – along with those of the soldiers headed to South Africa – are likely to be exhibited far and wide thanks to the new technology of the cinematograph. The gentleman with the moustache is clearly keen to keep them out of shot... but does he intend to be as visible as he is?

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.