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Welcome!films by the year

Films by the Year began around 2011 as a way to organize my film viewing by watching a film from each decade beginning with the 1890s up to the present decade. I begin with years that end in zero, 1890, 1900, 1910, etc. and once I’ve watched a film from each decade I return to the 1890s and start with films from years that end in one, 1891, 1901, 1911, etc. and so on. In order to do this I began entering the films in a spreadsheet in chronological order by release date. After a while I made the spreadsheet public as a Google sheet and in 2015 I created this website which includes my film index, which has now grown to over 21,000 entries. You will also find film reviews, articles on film history and the complete Lumière and American Mutoscope & Biograph photo catalogues organized by catalogue number. The latter catalogue is still a work in progress. Many of the films in the index and playlists for the film history articles link to my Films by the Year YouTube channel. I also have a channel on the Russian social media site Odnoklassniki. I invite you to join my Films by the Year Facebook Group where I post about my current projects and uploads to my YouTube channel.

Updates to the Film Index as of October 5, 2024

Here is the list of new YouTube uploads and index entries:

1896 Démolition d’un mur, I – new YouTube upload for Year in 1896 playlist (unlisted)
1896 West Point Cadet Drill [no. 2] – added to index and online AM&B Photo Catalogue
1898 Cuban Refugees Waiting for Rations – new YouTube upload for Year in 1898 playlist
1903 Biskra : une noce indigène – new YouTube upload for Year in 1903 playlist (unlisted)
1906 Police Raid at a Dog Fight – new index entry from Paper Print Collection Catalogue
1913 Boireau, bonhomme de pain d’épice – new index entry and YouTube upload from my digital archive
1983 Die letzte Runde (Tramps) – new index entry from rarefilmm.com
2009 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – new index entry from IMDb’s list of films released in 2009

Updates to the Film Index as of October 2, 2024

Here is the list of new YouTube uploads and index entries:

1896 Partie d’écarté – new YouTube upload for Year in 1896 playlist (unlisted)
1896 West Point Cadet Drill [no. 1] – added to index and online AM&B Photo Catalogue
1898 Colored Troops Disembarking – new YouTube upload for Year in 1898 playlist
1899 Pole Vaulting at Columbia University – new index entry from Paper Print Collection Catalogue
1903 Le Bey de Tunis et les personnages de sa suite descendant l’escalier du Bardo – new YouTube upload for Year in 1903 playlist (unlisted)
1913 Balkanskata Voyna (The Balkan War) – new index entry and YouTube upload from my digital archive (unlisted). Also on okru with audio commentary in Bulgarian.
1913 Les Misérables – new YouTube upload with English subtitles
1983 The Last Winter – new index entry from rarefilmm.com
1999 eXistenZ – new index entry from IMDb’s list of films released in 1999

Coming Soon

The Year 1898 in Film –  Article and YouTube playlist. Currently adding films from May with 117 films in the playlist so far.

The Year 1903 in Film – Article and YouTube playlist. Currently adding films from April with 42 films added to playlist so far.

Proglasenje Crne Gore za kraljevinu (1910) [Proclamation of Montenegro as a Kingdom]. Short film. Translating the Croatian intertitles to English.

Ongoing Projects

  1. Adding all entries from Kent Niver’s Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress to the film index. There are about 3,000 films listed in the book arranged in alphabetical order. I’m currently working through titles that begin with the letter “P”.
  2. Creating an online version of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Photo Catalogues. These can be downloaded from Rutgers University but there’s no way to search them. When it’s finished you will able to search by title and find a still from the film along with other information.
  3. I have an enormous amount of films in digital format that I haven’t added to the index or uploaded to YouTube. I’m currently working through all the films I have from 1913.
  4. Adding films from Jon Whitehead’s streaming site rarefilmm.com. I’m currently adding films from years ending in “3” to the film index.
  5.  Adding films from IMDb’s list of films from each year sorted by number of ratings. Currently working on years that end with “9”. I add one film 1899, 1909, …until I get to 2019 then start with the year 1900, 1910 and so on ad infinitum.
  6. Uploading my collection of over 700 movie trailers to Odnoklassniki. So far I’ve uploaded 78.
  7. Uploading my entire collection of digitized films to the cloud. Eventually external hard drives fail or might be destroyed in a fire or natural disaster. I started in July, 2023 and have uploaded over 8 TB so far. Currently I’m working through films from the year 2010 and some anthologies of films from the late 19th and early 20th centuries along with DVD extras, trailers, etc.