Mitchell & Kenyon Research Project

The Mitchell & Kenyon Collection consists of 800 non fiction titles produced between 1900-1913 which has survived as nitrate negatives. This extraordinary actuality footage is a vivid and unparalleled social record of early 20th-century British life, featuring street and transport scenes, sporting events, parades, local industries - ordinary people in everyday situations. The geographical spread of the material encompasses Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, Scotland, Ireland, the North East, Bristol and North Wales.

The bfi and University of Sheffield have formed a partnership which will combine the archiving and restoration of the films with a proactive research programme, both intended to be complete in 2004. Some 800 films need to be dated, contextualised and identified and their content revealed. The collection represents the most important recent discovery in the field of early British cinema history. It is a unique document relating to a single, regional company and in many senses is of equal national significance to the Lumiere and Gaumont archives in France and the Edison material in the USA.

Although the role of the travelling showmen in the exhibition of early film has been examined in the past decade, particular emphasis has been placed on the cinematograph show and its importance as a performance venue. Now, however, for the first time in the United Kingdom a body of films can be researched in the context of local exhibition, demonstrating direct links between commissioners, the audience and the development of the film programme. This will raise questions about how the audience and reception of these films may have directly affected the films, and what consequence this had for the evolution and development of film as a medium in the Edwardian period.

The National Fairground Archive, working closely with the bfi, will undertake to research and investigate the contextual supporting evidence within the holdings of the NFA, and the relevant local libraries, in order to provide accurate dates and venues for the commissioning and exhibitions of these films. Route books held at the National Fairground Archive reveal the date of the fair and the showmen who attended the event, and material in local newspapers often contains descriptions of the films. When combined with the visual cataloguing of the films' content by the Cataloguing Department at the bfi, this will be a preliminary analysis of the films commissioned by travelling showmen, and an evaluation on how the act of commissioning, directly influenced and ultimately affected the type of films produced from 1900 onwards. This research reveals a dynamic model of interaction and participation between the two businesses, as opposed to the more traditional view of the showmen as purely itinerant exhibitors whose role was purely that of precursors to permanent cinema exhibition. The films themselves represent vital socio-historical potential, and are without equal in this period in the United Kingdom. They will provide additional scope for study from a number of angles within the context of social and local history, entertainment, performance studies, and will be of interest to the wider non-film and academic community.