Flying a Kite

Streatham
1903
Silent
1m

In the year the Wright Brothers made their first flight, an Edwardian family film themselves taking to the skies… sort of.

The Passmore family were pioneers of the home movie at a time when few had access to film equipment, so these surviving films are a real treasure trove. It's strange to think that when this was filmed, even the box kite itself was a relatively new invention, developed in 1893 by another pioneer in the pursuit of flight, Lawrence Hargrave. Probably filmed on Streatham Common near the Passmore home, it appears the enthusiasm of the children - Brian, Mavis and Margaret - was greater than the wind speed that day.

Amateur footage of Brian, Mavis and Margaret Passmore, watched by an adult, flying a box kite with nurse and mother in attendance, possibly on Streatham Common.

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.