Blacksmith Scene (1893)

Original title

Blacksmithing Scene

Directed by

William Kennedy Dickson

Genre

documentary film, silent film, docufiction

Country

United States

Runtime

34 min

Rating

5.6 of 10 from 113 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two blacksmiths hammer at an anvil and take a drink. The film shows a simple reenactment of this work scene.

historicalbriefsilentstraightforwardobservationalstagedquaintold-fashioned

What happens

Blacksmith Scene (also known as Blacksmith Scene #1 and Blacksmithing Scene) is an 1893 American short black-and-white silent film directed by William K.L. Dickson, the Scottish-French inventor who, while under the employ of Thomas Edison, developed one of the first fully functional motion picture cameras. It is historically significant as the first Kinetoscope film shown in public exhibition on May 9, 1893, and is the earliest known example of actors performing a role in a film. It was also the first U.S. motion picture film ever copyrighted that same year. 102 years later, in 1995, Blacksmithing Scene was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is the second-oldest film included in the Registry, after Newark Athlete (1891). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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