Kinoscope Parlour at the Fashion in Film Festival

While going to see some of the Fashion in Film Festival screenings, I met quite a few people asking me where they could find the Kinoscope Parlour installations.

These machines designed by Mark Garside and inspired by Thomas A. Edison and W.K.L. Dickson's kinetoscope are indeed scattered all over London.

You can actually find a brochure at the venues where the Fashion in Film Festival is taking place that includes a map with the twelve locations – among them the V&A, Somerset House, the BFI Southbank – where you can find the Kinoscope Parlour.

If you can't grab the map, check out the kinoscopes Castle Green, CREST Walthamstow, The Horse Hospital, Lewisham Library, Kilburn Library, Queen’s Market, Viktor Wynd’s Little Shop of Horrors, The Wapping Project and Wolves Lane Nursery.

Each kinetoscope shows a different selection of archival films and, by turning the wheel clockwise, you will be able to see hand-coloured and stencilled silent films and control the speed of the film projection thanks to cutting-edge digital technology.

Among the films you will be able to see there are also Danse de l'éventail (1902), The Dancer's Dream (1905), Loïe Fuller (1902), Tit for Tat (1906) and The Red Spectre (1907) (you can check out the entire programme of films here), plus documentary footage from the capital's film archives focusing on the leisure activities in the city in the 1920s (check out the rather entertaining clip of girls competing to be the next British film star at the V&A kinoscope).

I'm sure that after seeing some of the films included, you will agree with W.K.L. Dickson's words, "What is the future of the kinetograph? (…) It is the crown and flower of nineteenth-century magic, the crystallization of Eons of groping enchantments. In its wholesome, sunny and accessible laws are possibilities undreamt of by the occult lore of the East; the conservative wisdom of Egypt, the jealous erudition of Babylon, the guarded mysteries of Delphic and Eleusinian shrines."

The Kinoscope Parlour is across London until 14th December.

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