Welcome!
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 July 13, 2024
I’ve completed my final work on the year 1904 for now by replacing all links to IMDb in my index and YouTube uploads to other references sites: the American Film Institute for American films, the British Film Institute for British films, the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and Le Grimh for French films, Wikipedia, Silent Era, and a few others for the rest. I was unable to find alternate links for only eight out of 386 films. In my opinion these other sites offer more accurate information and/or a better user experience. In so doing I made a a few adjustments to release dates and discovered that one film was actually released in 1903. I will continue adding films from 1904 to my index occasionally as my research continues but for now I will be moving on to the year 1898, 1903 and the other projects listed below.
Updates to the Film Index as of July 8, 2024
Coming Soon
The Year 1898 in Film – Currently adding films from April with 94 films in the playlist so far.
The Year 1903 in Film – Article and YouTube playlist. Just started the playlist on June 1, 2024. Three films so far.
L’Braiser ardent (1923) with English subtitles. Ivan Mosjoukine’s influential second directorial effort after emigrating from the Soviet Republic to France. I have about 20 minutes to go.
Ongoing Projects
- 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”.
- 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.
- 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 1912.
- Adding films from Jon Whitehead’s streaming site rarefilmm.com. I’m currently adding films from years ending in “3” to the film index.
- Adding films from IMDb’s list of films from each year sorted by number of ratings. Currently working on years that end with “8”. I add one film 1898, 1908, …until I get to 2018 then start with the year 1899, 1909 and so on ad infinitum.
- 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 almost 6 TB so far. Currently I’m working through films from the year 1970 and some anthologies of films from the late 19th and early 20th centuries along with DVD extras, trailers, etc.