Lobster Films

The story of the history of sound and color on the screen is told in two magnificent documentaries: A la recherche du son / In Search of Sound and Un rêve en couleurs / A Dream in Colors. It's a long and adventurous story whose origins go back way beyond the birth of cinema. We learn about films rented with a singer, films colored by handpainting, strange sound effect machines and bizarre color systems. Crazy inventors as well as uncanny personalities contributed in their own way to the history of film. Beside the two documentaries the 2-disc DVD offers 35 supplemental features with incredible and unknown images and sounds.

Compilation of 16 short films made between 1896 and 1948, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements. Among others there are the first screen appearance of Charles Chaplin, a documentary about the original Titanic, a Russian slapstick comedy about chess players in Moscow, a parade of Hollywood stars in a short film of 1931, one of the best comedies with Charley Chase and a film with the legendary dancer Josephine Baker.

Compilation of 17 short films made between 1906 and 1941, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements. Among others there are an educational film by D.W. Griffith about women and cinema, a strange comedy with Douglas Faurbands as drug addicted detective, Stan Laurel in a parody on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Duke Ellington in a famous early soundie filmed by Dudley Murphy, hand colored silents from France and Porky Pig presenting his own newsreel.

Compilation of 19 short films made between 1900 and 1941, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements. Among others there are slapstick comedies with Snub Pollard, Harold Lloyd and Charley Chase, documentary footage of the original Titanic and its captain, a dancing pig, commercials made by the cartoonist Robert Lotrac, the first great western in film history THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY in a hand colored version and the only known film with legendary Django Reinhardt.

Compilation of 15 short films made between 1906 and 1944, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements: newsreel-type footage, obscure Hollywood shorts, cartoons, promotional films and just plain odd bits of celluloid. Among others there are a preview trailer with the Marx Brothers, an early tinted adaption of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, a strange French animation film in Art Deco style, Laurel & Hardy presenting the MGM production for 1936, one of the best slapstick comedies of Mack Sennett and a Technicolor puppet animation by George Pal.

Compilation of 16 short films made between 1900 and 1950, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements: newsreel-type documentaries, obscure Hollywood shorts, cartoons, promotional films and just plain odd bits of celluloid. Among others there are a censored Bugs Bunny cartoon by Tex Avery, a fragment of a lost John Ford silent western movie, a 1900 colored adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac with soundtrack, French commercial from the 30s and 50s with Jacques Tati and Laurel & Hardy imitators, a recently rediscovered comedy with Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, and a Screen Song Cartoon with Lilian Roth and the famous bouncing ball by Dave and Max Fleischer.

Compilation of 17 short films made between 1905 and 1955, in black and white and in colored versions, restored from original elements: newsreel-type documentaries, obscure Hollywood shorts, cartoons, promotional films and just plain odd bits of celluloid. Among others there are two films by the most famous female directors of the silent era Lois Weber and Alice Guy Blaché, slapstick comedies with Stan Laurel and James Parrott, cartoons by Ub Iwerks and by the Van Beuren Studio, one of the first French jazz films with Stéphane Grappelli, a hunting film from Africa by the Belgian cinematographer Alfred Machin and French commercials from the 30s and 50s. All films are with short introductions as extra features.