''The Derby'' is an 1895

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

silent

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

, produced and directed by

Birt Acres Birt Acres (23 July 1854 – 27 December 1918) was an American and British photographer and film pioneer. Among his contributions to the early film industry are the first working 35 mm camera in Britain (Wales), and ''Birtac'', the firs ...

for exhibition on

Robert W. Paul Robert William Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker. He made narrative films as early as April 1895. Those films were shown first in Edison Kinetoscope knockoffs. In 1896 he s ...

Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

s, featuring the end of the 29 May 1895

Epsom Derby The Derby Stakes, also known as the Epsom Derby or the Derby, and as the Cazoo Derby for sponsorship reasons, is a Group 1 flat horse race in England open to three-year-old colts and fillies. It is run at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey o ...

viewed from a raised position close to the finishing line with the main stand in the distance. A photograph of Acres filming the documentary has survived, which shows that the camera used in the production was relatively portable. The film was long considered lost but footage discovered in the Ray Henville collection in 1995 has been identified by the BFI as being from this film.

Synopsis

A stationary camera looks diagonally across a racetrack toward the infield showing the horses as they pass. Once the horses have passed the camera it is clear that the race has come to an end and there is a close finish between three horses. Once the race is over police officers run onto the field. The camera also displays various members of the audience moving around.

Current status

Often confused with the 1896 Derby, shot by

Robert Paul Robert Paul (born June 2, 1937) is a Canadian former pair skater. He teamed up with Barbara Wagner in 1952. They became the 1960 Olympic champions, four-time World champions, and five-time Canadian national champions. After retiring from compe ...

, the 1895 film is now freely available to viewers in the UK in a digital restoration on the BFI Player. New research has revealed that the Acres and Paul films, including this one, were shot far slower than the forty frames per second required by the Kinetoscope. They were actually filmed at around sixteen frames per second, which would later be established as the standard speed in the

silent era A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, wh ...

References

External links

* *
The Derby
' at the BFI Film & TV Database *

' at ''Silent Era'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Derby, The 1890s British films British horse racing films British black-and-white films British silent short films 1890s short documentary films Black-and-white documentary films Films directed by Birt Acres Documentary films about horse racing 1890s rediscovered films Articles containing video clips British short documentary films Rediscovered British films British sports documentary films