Children's Party, "Oranges and Lemons"

1902
Silent
1m

Edwardian children play a quick game of oranges and lemons for the camera in this early home movie.

Put a camera in front of children from any age and they will stand and stare. Herbert Passmore, a pioneer home movie maker, was clever enough to introduce a party game to keep the action moving. The children forming the arch make the perfect frame for the image, although some of the off-screen direction seems a little rough.

Since only short reels of film stock were available in the very early days of filmmaking, you'll have to tack on your own ending: "Here comes a candle to light you to bed; Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"

Pioneers of Personal Film

At the dawn of the cinema age, these trailblazing early adopters brought filmmaking technology into the home.

Home moviemaking is older than the first cinemas: we've been filming ourselves for well over a hundred years. The birth of the cinematograph in 1895 inspired a plethora of inventions pitched at the domestic market: Kinoras, Kammatographs, Pictorialographs, Birtacs and Biokams - all cameras designed for amateurs and enthusiasts to film and project in the home. This collection celebrates the earliest home movies preserved in Britain, and bears witness to the dawn of the amateur's long-standing fascination with family, travel and community. "The object in introducing this apparatus is to endeavour to popularize this extremely fascinating branch of photography.... [I have] always looked forward to the time when animated photography would be within the reach of every one" - filmmaker/inventor Birt Acres, on his Birtac camera, 1898.