The Arrival of Film in Brighton

The end of the 19th Century was an era of technological wonder. Alongside electricity, the telephone and recorded sound, three vision technologies became very popular - photography, the magic lantern and film. Brighton & Hove emerged as a centre for all of these marvels. The sea-going electric car made its way through the sea, photographic studios lined King’s Road, a film studio was erected in Hove and lantern and film shows were screened in the theatres, music halls and on the piers. This talk introduces these wonders and looks at those first films to be made and seen in Brighton from 1895.

Dr Frank Gray is an early film historian, a curator of film exhibitions for Brighton & Hove Museums, the co-founder of Cinecity (the Brighton Film Festival) and the retired Director of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton. It collects, preserves and shares films made in Brighton & Hove and the region and its collection can be viewed at: screenarchive.brighton.ac.uk

Frame still from James Williamson’s ‘A Big Swallow’, Hove, 1901 (image credit: BFI/SASE)