Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
early cinema research group
The Early Cinema Research Group was established in 2024 in the Leeds School of Arts at Leeds Beckett University to encourage and facilitate research into all form of visual media focusing on the early and pre-history of cinema.
Frame : Four – Lost and Imagined Films, is the latest exhibition by the Early Cinema Research Group at Leeds Beckett University. Showing now until the 24th October.
Frame Four
The group brings together scholars at Beckett such as Professor Robert Shail and Dr Steven Gerrard, external scholars like local historian Irfan Shah and early cinema expert Dr Keith Dando, and a network of external partners including Leeds Industrial Museum, the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, Fleischer Studios, Leeds City Museums and Galleries, and the historic Leeds Library.
At the heart of the Group's work is the Stephen Herbert Archive, a collection of more than 500 items including books, research papers, and original artefacts connected to the early history of motion pictures. Among its treasures are an original Talbotype and an original Eadweard Muybridge stereoscopic photograph. We have a number of items relating to early animator Emile Reynaud, as well as to Leeds’ own pioneer of cinema, Louis Le Prince.
Our first exhibition took place at the White Column Gallery and the Platform Gallery at Leeds Beckett in January 2025 and featured many exhibits from our collections in addition to a replica of the Louis Le Prince single lens camera from the Leeds Industrial Museum. We will continue to organise events in the coming months, with our next one covering Emile Reynaud and the beginnings of animation due for May 2025.
It's particularly appropriate that the Group should be established in Leeds as the city is, of course, the birthplace of cinema where the first moving images were created by Louis le Prince. The Stephen Herbert Archive is currently held at Broadcasting Place on the very site of Le Prince's studio.
For further information please contact: r.shail@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.
