Laura Bayley

17 self-taught directors come together to give new meaning to their work in the form of 20 new episodes that are part of the feature film "Noisy Silencers", an extrasensory video experience that takes us on a journey through the history of cinema, from the 1880s to the present in a tangle of deliriums of the seventh art.

Possibly the first film to utilize the technique of focus pulling. A man kisses a beautiful and lively woman, then the image blurs and dissolves into a clear image of the man waking up to his nagging wife.

An adaptation of the folk tale.

Produced and directed by George Albert Smith, the film shows a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel. The Kiss in the Tunnel is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. It is in fact, two films in one, hence the 2 min length. Firstly, the G.A. Smith film here for the central cheeky scene in the carriage. The train view footage however is Cecil Hepworth's work, entitled 'View From An Engine Front - Shilla Mill Tunnel', edited into two halves in order to provide a visual narrative of the train entering the tunnel before the kiss and then leaving afterwards. More information about the filming of the phantom train ride can be found searching for the Hepworth film separately.

Santa arrives at a house on Christmas Eve to deliver his presents for the children.

A romantic couple are transformed into skeletons via X-Rays. The film combines two very recent innovations: Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays in 1895, and Georges Méliès' accidental realisation of the special-effects potential of the jump-cut in 1896.

A scene from Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Despite the common belief, this is NOT the world's first Dickens' adaptation in cinema.

A male and female clown drink, smoke, and flirt in this early Kinemacolor short.