[KS] Travelogue: Book on Seoul and First Movie ever Filmed and Played in Korea by E. Burton Holmes, 1901

[Kwang On Yoo]

Thank you very much for the information.

I have learned that Holmes' Original 1901 film is now housed at Korea Film
Council(한국영화진흥원).

Kwang-On Yoo

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws>wrote:

> Thanks to Kwang-On Yoo for putting our attention on this -- especially
> this early movie.
>
> E. Burton Holmes (1870-1958) seems to be the inventor of the term
> "travelogue"--at least did he fill that term with some content in modern
> times. From 1902/03 onwards, AFTER returning from his Russia/China/Korea
> tour, he used a small 35 mm Warwick Bioscope camera (see here for photos
> and illustrations of that and earlier cameras:
> http://wiki.phalkefactory.net/**index.php?title=Camera<http://wiki.phalkefactory.net/index.php?title=Camera>)
> as did most early filmmakers, because of its convenient size. As the older
> ones among you are aware the 35 mm film became the standard for several
> decades. The earlier films he did with Oscar Depue, e.g. the famous, very
> early Hopi snake-dance documentary at Oraibi from 1898 or 1899 (if you ever
> visited an exhibition about Navajo or Hopi Indians' culture you will have
> likely seen that film there)--well, those very early movies were done with
> one of Léon Gaumont's cameras. In 1897 Holmes had sent Oscar Depue to
> France to buy such a camera. This was a very bulky camera (see above link)
> that used 60 mm wide film.
>
> The short movie that Kwang-On Yoo pointed to seems actually a segment from
> the 1922 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release "The Burton Holmes Story":
> http://emovieposter.com/**gallery/inc/archive_image.php?**id=16444484<http://emovieposter.com/gallery/inc/archive_image.php?id=16444484>
> According to the description there should be a longer sequence in that
> movie showing scenes from Inch'ôn Bay (but that short posted clip does not
> have that). Anyway, what is noteworthy is that (a) all 1901 material was
> re-mastered on 35 mm film, and (b) some sequences may not be from 1901 but
> from 1912, when Holmes was again in Korea. The court dancers are indeed
> from 1901, but not sure about the remaining scenes.
>
> The main point, however, is that there must be--very likely--much more
> material from 1901 and 1912. Please remember that the just mentioned 1922
> MGM movie was just taking some short scenes from some of Holmes movies ...
> and Holmes, by 1922, had already done travel film for 25 years at that
> time, every summer a new destination. In 2003 tons of film rolls by Holmes
> were rediscovered in a sealed-up storage room across the street from Holmes
> former enterprise. See here: http://burtonholmes.org/**
> rediscovery/photos.html <http://burtonholmes.org/rediscovery/photos.html>
> These are now all at the George Eastman House (Eastman Kodak) in Rochester
> (http://eastmanhouse.org). Maybe someone into film history (or into
> studying that early 1900s period) might want to dive deeper into this and
> find out if there is more material on Korea that survived? If you carefully
> compare the dance scene in the online movie Kwang-On Yoo pointed us to ...
> http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/**ClipView.do?clipid=2614233<http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=2614233>
>  (at minute 2:05 to 2:39)
> with the small intro clip on the Holmes collection at the museum ...
> http://podcast.eastmanhouse.**org/preserving-the-world-of-**burton-holmes/<http://podcast.eastmanhouse.org/preserving-the-world-of-burton-holmes/>
>  (at minutes 5:45 to 6:08)
> ... you will see that there must be more: e.g., the the scene with the
> male dancer is not fully part of that other clip, and in that clip (at the
> Daum site) top and bottom were obviously also cut.
>
>
> Best,
> Frank
>
> --
> ------------------------------**--------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreaweb.ws
>
>
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