9.5mm: the first popular format to bring watching films into the home

Being able to watch a film at home – now perhaps the most common way to see them – was a dream of the earliest film pioneers, dating back to the 1890s. But it didn’t begin to become a widespread reality until 1922, with the introduction of a now little-known format: 9.5mm film.  

Invented by Pathé as a more affordable follow-up to their cumbersome and expensive 28mm, 9.5mm was released into the home-movie market the year before 16mm (and 10 years before 8mm), with the Pathé Baby projector. Primarily a home-viewing format, it was soon favoured for home-movie and amateur filmmaking and became the first popular, widely-used home-movie film gauge.

The format remained immensely popular for several decades, especially in the UK, notably for people who were unable to afford 16mm film. In Britain, it reached peak success in the 1930s, before beginning to decline during World War II, especially as Pathé’s main factory was in occupied Europe. Technical developments stalled and there was limited access to many films from the continent. During the same period, Kodak’s 16mm film – based in the non-occupied USA and used for US military reconnaissance work during the war – had money poured into its development. 

Following the war, hindered further by post-war austerity, Pathé was slow to recover its 9.5mm film business, while Kodak’s 16mm and 8mm flourished. 9.5mm recovered to a certain degree in France and the UK, but never really regained its pre-war success. In 1960, with competition from improved 8mm and 16mm, and after various attempts to revitalise it, 9.5mm ceased professional manufacturing.  

Yet, though easily dismissible as enthusiastic nostalgia and often considered irrelevant by moving image archives (due to the format’s apparent substandard image quality, and often shortened versions of the original theatrical films released), this now little-known film gauge has persevered to this day. Private individuals, and organisations such as the UK’s Group 9.5, have continued to collect 9.5mm film and champion its use, finding alternative ways to manufacture, process, print and screen films on the format. 

The format also has major historical and archival value in several often-overlooked factors. In the UK alone, as it was more affordable than 16mm, 9.5mm allowed a whole generation to see films that didn’t screen in their local cinema or film society, as well as giving people from a lower socioeconomic background, or with geographically limited access to cinemas, a chance to see films they would otherwise have missed. 

As such, the format became a starting point for some of Britain’s most important filmmakers and historians. Ken Russell and David Lean started with 9.5mm film as kids, and Kevin Brownlow discovered Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) on a 9.5mm reel of film as a teenager, which led to a lifelong restoration project of the film, among many others, and a career documenting early film history.  

Although there’s often an assumption that the wider the film, the bigger the image area, the 9.5mm image area is only marginally smaller than that of 16mm, and far bigger than 8mm film. Due to the positioning of the perforation hole in the centre of the film (between the frames), the picture area extends to the film edge, reaching similar dimensions to 16mm (without the perforations down the outside edges), giving superb image quality on screen. 

While most of the theatrical films released on 9.5mm for the home market are abridged versions, the films that have survived only on this gauge are numerous. According to David Pierce in his book The Survival of America Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929, at least 56 American silent films are known to exclusively survive on 9.5mm film. 

In his essay ‘They Survive on Nine-Point-Five’ in the recently published 9.5mm Film and Participatory Media Before the Digital Age (edited by Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes and Zoë Viney Burgess), filmmaker and historian Christopher Bird discusses this at length. Several Vitagraph films only survive on 9.5mm film, including The Beloved Brute (1924), starring Victor McLaglen, and Pampered Youth (1925), the first known adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel. 

Several British films by notable directors also survive exclusively on the gauge, including Adrian Brunel’s A Light Woman (1928), now preserved on 9.5mm film in the BFI National Archive. Film restorations have used 9.5mm elements where no other film elements survive, such as Christopher Bird and Kevin Brownlow’s restoration of William S. Hart’s The Gunfighter (1917). Even Brownlow’s famous restoration of Napoleon included 9.5mm film until better elements were discovered.  

But the survival of films on 9.5mm is not limited to the silent era. Sound came to 9.5mm in the late 1930s, and many films were released in the UK. British Lion produced or distributed feature films formed a strong part of 9.5mm home-movie releases between 1938 and through World War II, as well as the British Lion Variety shorts. The 35mm elements for many of these titles are considered lost or are inaccessible due to their uniqueness or fragility. As they’ve survived on 9.5mm, the format remains the only way to see films including The Green Pack (1934) and Charing Cross Road (1936).

All these reasons make 9.5mm an important format for film historians, bringing an increasing sense of relevance to this weird little format with the hole in the middle.

In collaboration with the UK’s Group 9.5, two currently unavailable British Lion releases, Marry the Girl (1935) and Sporting Love (1936), will be screened on 9.5mm film as part of the Projecting the Archive strand at BFI Southbank on 21 April 2026.