Les Kiriki: Acrobates Japonais, directed by Segundo de Chomon in 1907, is a lovingly hand-tinted artifact from the early days of French cinema. Similar in technique to George Melies, Aragonese film maker Chomon was a pioneer of cinematic special effects. In Les Kiriki, Chomon creates the illusion of complex, gravity defying acrobatics by having dancers lay on a black floor and filming them from above. The feat, while not as miraculous as if they were actually standing upright performing the balancing act, is still imaginatively choreographed, requiring considerable skill. The use of absurd Japanese wigs, pulsing colors and the primitive set result in a witty and surreal little film. For the soundtrack I added The Ventures’ “Let There Be Drums.”

The second video is Chomon’s Le Spectre Rouge which was also made in 1907 but released in 1908. Music by Shpongle.
 

It looks like the action in ‘Acrobates Japonais’ is also going backwards, yes?

I love and thank those smarty guys who did the in-camera special effects way back when.  Fucking genius.  Seeing this stuff as a kid led me to attempt such things with my super-8.
(making movies with ‘sfx’ was also an excuse to light off and blow shit up with fireworks… “but mom?!? It’s for a movie”)

The second one is actually called Satán se divierte or Satan s’amuse.
Fantastic stuff!

For anyone interested in these early films Kino make a fantastic boxed set collecting some amazing early examples.

http://kino.com/video/item.php?product_id=694

It’s a great introduction the history of early films.

Josh,

the film is known by both “Satan s’amuse” and “Le Spectre Rouge”. “Satan s’muse” is Chomon’s original title. From what I can gather Pathe films released it as “Le Spectre Rouge”.

Just a stupid question: What’s the thing with the colour? I know, at that time a few films had been handcoloured after they were recorded, but here it looks like they were actually shot in colour. Was that even possible?

Marc - I’m slightly embarrassed that I used the word “actually” as it makes me sound far nerdier & righteous than intended. IMDB needs to update itself somewhat, though to be fair, I find much more on Satan s’amuse than I do on Le Spectre Rogue when I do a search.
Regardless, great films to highlight.

Something DM ought to do a post on if you haven’t, would be Douglas Fairbank’s Mystery of the Leaping Fish, jaw dropping for completely different reasons: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8884765471391527230#