Alfred Henry Whitehouse (15 September 1856 – 7 April 1929) was a notable New Zealand motion picture exhibitor and producer. He was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

, England, in 1856. Whitehouse produced the earliest New Zealand films being from the first of December 1898, the

Opening of the Auckland Industrial and Mining Exhibition ''Opening of the Auckland Industrial and Mining Exhibition'' was an 1898 New Zealand documentary film. The earliest New Zealand films being from the first of December 1898, the ''opening of the Auckland Industrial and Mining Exhibition'', and Bo ...

, and Boxing Day that year, Uhlan winning the Auckland Cup at Ellerslie Racecourse. Whitehouse in 1895, became the first person to exhibit motion pictures in New Zealand by using of Edison kinetoscopes. In 1898 Whitehouse imported a camera and employed photographer W. H. Bartlett to operate the camera. By mid 1900 Whitehouse had produced about 10 films.

Personal

Whitehouse was born in 1856 at Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, to Abel Whitehouse and Matilda (Craddock). He married Eliza Davis at Auckland in 1878. Eliza died in 1888, leaving Alfred with five children. In 1897 he married Ada Baker. Ada died in 1910 and Whitehouse died in 1929. He was survived by two sons and a daughter.

References

1856 births 1929 deaths 1890s in New Zealand cinema New Zealand film producers English emigrants to New Zealand People from Birmingham, West Midlands {{NewZealand-film-bio-stub