The Boxing Kangaroo (1896)

Directed by

Birt Acres

Genre

documentary film, silent film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1 min

Rating

4.6 of 10 from 12 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young boy boxes with a kangaroo in a black and white silent film from 1896. It was made for early peep show machines and had been thought lost until it was identified in old fairground footage.

historicalshortsilentcuriousplayfullightheartednoveltyarchivalstraightforward

What happens

The Boxing Kangaroo is an 1896 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, produced and directed by Birt Acres for exhibition on Robert W. Paul's peep show Kinetoscopes, featuring a young boy boxing with a kangaroo. The film was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme, originally shown in a portable booth at Hull Fair by Midlands photographer George Williams, donated to the National Fairground Archive was identified as being from this film. It was one of at least four boxing-themed films Acres produced in 1896, the others being Boxing Match; or, Glove Contest, A Boxing Match in Two Rounds by Sgt. Instructor F.Barrett and Sgt. Pope and A Prize Fight by Jem Mace and Burke. The year before, German filmmaker Max Skladanowsky had made a similar film depicting a man boxing with a kangaroo, entitled Das boxende Känguruh. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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