The list in release order, from the earliest shorts onward. Showing 1–20 of 319.
28 Oct 1892 00:15:00
Pierrot climbs to Colombine's window at night to serenade her and win her over. Harlequin, his rival, appears and turns the courtship into open conflict, mocking Pierrot's attempt and staking his own claim on Colombine.
28 Oct 1892 00:15:00
A wanderer comes into a country inn and orders a beer from the pretty waitress. She brings it, and while he sets about flirting with her the kitchen boy slips in behind him, drains the glass and vanishes. The wanderer, finding his glass empty and assuming he has drunk it, orders another.
06 Apr 1906 00:03:00
The film opens on a live-action hand drawing on a chalkboard. Blackton sketches the outline of a man's face and then a woman's, and once his hand withdraws the drawings finish themselves and come alive.
17 Aug 1908 00:02:00
An artist's live-action hand draws a stick-figure clown, and the clown immediately sets off on his own. What follows is less a plot than a chain of transformations, each object turning into the next before the eye has settled on it.
01 Sep 1908
Barcarola belongs to the first years of Brazilian cinema, when Julio Ferrez, son of the pioneer exhibitor Marc Ferrez, was making short films for the Rio de Janeiro trade.
01 Jan 1910 00:02:30
The film is a circus act in seven short scenes, separated by stretches of black. A clown performs with his donkey: juggling, tumbling and setting up tricks that the animal either completes or spoils. A circus monkey helps out in some of the scenes.
01 Jan 1911 00:06:30
A small Father Frost figure, the kind that hangs as an ornament on a Russian Christmas tree, comes to life and climbs down into the world outside. He sets off on foot across a snowy plain toward the forest, carrying a little fir tree on his shoulder.
08 Apr 1911 00:10:00
The on-screen title is Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics. Most of the film is live action. At a club, McCay bets his fellow cartoonists that he can make drawings move.
08 Jan 1912 00:06:00
A nervous man glances around before going into his room and getting into bed. Behind him, a giant mosquito in a top hat and carrying a little bag flies in through the transom window over the door. It lands on the sleeping man, sharpens its stinger on a grinding wheel, and starts to drink.
26 Apr 1912 00:08:00
The subtitle tells the story: "the war of the longhorns with the stag beetles". In a mock-medieval court of insects, the beautiful Lukanida, queen of the stag beetles, is loved by a knight of the rival longhorn beetles, and their romance sets off a war between the two tribes, with castles, duels, a…
10 Jan 1914 00:06:00
Detailed plot records for this early entry are thin, and what follows is based on the surviving film. The Colonel, a short, round boaster in a pith helmet with a rifle under his arm, marches across a bare African landscape under a blazing cartoon sun, looking for big game to bag.
08 Feb 1914 00:12:00
In the theatrical version, a live-action prologue shows McCay and fellow cartoonists on an outing to a natural history museum, where McCay bets that he can bring a dinosaur to life. He goes away and draws thousands of pictures, then hosts a dinner to show the result.
25 Feb 1916 00:02:00
Krazy Kat is the cook in a little restaurant, and Ignatz Mouse is the only customer. Ignatz orders roast duck with gravy. Krazy brings it, adds a whole pie as a gesture of generosity, and starts making conversation: a lot of famous people, Krazy has noticed, have names beginning with "G".
29 Feb 1916 00:02:00
Krazy Kat sets out from a cottage marked "Krazy Kat's House" in a little car stencilled "Kazook", which bounces along the comic-strip horizon. Night falls; a crescent moon hangs over a tall blank wall with a single window, and Krazy pulls up beneath it.
03 Mar 1916
Reliable plot documentation for this short is thin, and the descriptions attached to online copies contradict each other, so this summary sticks to what the surviving film shows.
07 Sep 1916 00:06:00
Detailed plot records for this short are thin; this account follows the surviving 16 mm print. Bobby Bumps, the mischievous small boy of Earl Hurd's series, is preoccupied with the story that babies are delivered by the stork, and he and his bulldog Fido talk it over.
11 Nov 1916 00:05:30
No detailed contemporary synopsis of this Bobby Bumps short has turned up, so this summary is based on the surviving film. Bobby Bumps and his dog Fido get into the circus, behind the scenes of the big top, where a keeper is tending an elephant with buckets beside him.
04 Feb 1917 00:05:00
Plot records for this short are thin, and this summary follows the surviving film. The Colonel, Bray's pint-sized, bewhiskered braggart, is out in the bush, a landscape of scrub, rocks and bare trees, when he runs into a kangaroo.
01 Jun 1917 00:05:00
A self-appointed samurai, more swagger than skill, wants a sword so he can prove himself by attacking passers-by in the street, the practice known as tsujigiri. A merchant sees him coming and sells him a blade that turns out to be blunt.
01 Feb 1918
The film adapted one of Japan's best-known folk tales. A young fisherman, Urashima Tarō, rescues a turtle from children who are tormenting it.
