Charles Urban

On September 28th, 1903, the Urban Mountaineering Expedition, headed by Frank Ormiston-Smith, left Zermatt to attempt the conquest of the Matterhorn. On the 29th, the conquest was completed by the filming of the panorama from the actual summit of the mountain. The film consists of 20 scenes and illustrates the whole ascent from Zermatt through the Hornli Ridge. A copy of the film was found in Zermatt in 1953 and was was erroneously attributed to Frederick Burlingham and dated 1901. Since then, the film has been widely publicized as the first mountain film under the title of 'Cervin 1901', but this is incorrect. Ormiston previously had made 'Alpine series' (1901), 'The ascent of Mont Blanc' (1902), 'Climbing the Great Schreckhorn' (1902) and 'Ascent of the Jungfrau' (1903). The pictures and descriptions of the Charles Urban Trading 1903 film catalogue show without any doubt that 'Ascent of the Matterhorn' and 'Cervin 1901' are the same film.

"Percy Smith (1880-1944) was world famous as a photographer of plant life. Probably the first British example of time-lapse photography as applied to the growth of plants." Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1955.

Documentary film about the military preparations of the United Kingdom in World War I. It includes scenes of military training of new recruits in Aldershot Garrison, Hampshire. The Royal Navy is depicted stationed at Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands.

The 280 different views comprising this series depict sights along a route over the most important thoroughfares of London, not merely showing street scenes with the principle edifices, monuments, bridges, etc., but include “snapshots” of the various human types and their different occupations and pleasures to be found in all the districts touched upon in our “Bioscopic Ramble,” from fashionable West End London to the slums of Whitechapel etc.

1906, produced by Charles Urban, cinematography by Frank Ormiston-Smith.

With a dual motion a cruise ship and a fishing boat pass one another on the Nile and butlers in turbans set up a wooden gangway. Thanks to a rope and pulley system cows climb skywards then disappear into the hold of the sailing vessel. On the bank, black-haired women rock back and forth, bursting out laughing and showing the first signs of going into a state of trance. Never-before filmed gestures and faces of the people of the Nile succeed one another, uprooted to an unknown, magical world. The Banks of the Nile is one of the first experiments of film in colour that uses the Kinemacolor process.

An intensely unhappy woman hatches a plot to switch the babies of a poor family and a rich family. But the nurse hired to pull off this transfer refuses to go through with it, leaving each baby with its proper family. When the babies are grown, the man from the poor family (who has been led to believe that he did come from the rich family) goes to the house of the other and throws him out. The remainder of the film deals with the frustrations of mistaken identity.

An early British Kinemacolor short, in which delicate tones and shades of color are beautifully reproduced in examples of highly cultivated sweet pea flowers.