Utilizing 35mm materials held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Library of Congress, Kino International and MoMA have assembled this unprecedented collection of 140 films produced by the Edison company. From early experimental films from 1891 through a full feature film produced in 1918, the collection runs the gamut of cinematic primitives shot in the Black Maria studio at Edison’s laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, through actualities, to short dramas and comedies.

The films are presented in chronological order and are interspersed with introductions and commentaries by noted Edison film historian Charles Musser, Steven Higgins and Eileen Bowser of MoMA, Patrick Loughney of the Library of Congress and the George Eastman House, Richard Koszarski of Rutgers University, Paul Israel of the Edison papers collection, among others. The films are accompanied by music performed by Philip Carli, Jon C. Mirsalis, Ben Model, Donald Sosin and Clark Wilson.

Several of the films have previously been available to collectors in VHS home video collections originating from blurry 16mm preservation prints struck from the LoC’s paper print collection in the 1950s, and more recently from 35mm materials offered in some collections released on DVD. Now, the staples of those collections — Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903), The European Rest Cure (1904), The Kleptomaniac (1905) — are available together with a large number of Edison films never-before released on home video. The collection wraps up with a complete presentation of the war feature The Unbeliever (1918), the final film produced by the Edison company.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.