Flickers of an age when stars and audience were one

In 1994, the history of British film changed for ever. In fact, British history as a whole would never look the same again. In a basement in Blackburn, Lancashire, three metal drums were discovered, containing more than 800 reels of original camera negatives of films languishing unseen since 1922. The past was about to be reinvented.

The basement was the former business premises of Mitchell and Kenyon, a long-defunct firm that during its early 1900s heyday plied its trade as "Makers of Cinematographs and Cinematograph Films". The unearthed films lasted only a minute and a half or two minutes each, but they offered a unique insight into Britain at the dawn of the 20th century.

Practically all were made in the north of England about 100 years ago. They showed Edwardians at work and play, at football matches and military parades, at the seaside, in the street, exiting factory gates and marching in processions. So significant was the find that when it eventually found its way to the National Film and Television Archive, it boosted the archive's Edwardian-era holdings by some 20 per cent.

The archive is managed by the British Film Institute, which collaborated with the National Fairground Archive at Sheffield University to restore the films and research their historical context. The work of some four years has started to bear fruit. A few months ago, TV historian Dan Cruickshank presented three BBC2 programmes about the collection, all now available on a BFI DVD.

Last month saw the release of another DVD, Electric Edwardians , featuring 85 fascinating minutes of the films themselves. And completing the package is this book, a comprehensive, multi-authored guide to the films, the social climate that encouraged their making and what they tell us about the Edwardians. Along the way, the degradation of early film stock is explained, early movie cameras dissected and the first steps of British cinema meticulously charted. One can hardly imagine the job being done better.

As the authors remind us, the Mitchell and Kenyon films provide modern eyes with an unparalleled source of information about the mores and manners of a bygone age, but they were undertaken not as documentary records but as a strictly commercial enterprise. In the late 1890s, Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon considered various means of exploiting the new cinematic medium. At one time, they were best known for filmed reconstructions of events from the Boer War enacted in the countryside around Blackburn.

They also followed the lead of the Lumi re brothers in France by offering the British public a thrilling new sensation: seeing itself on film. Many of Mitchell and Kenyon's clients were itinerant showmen who would hire the company to film people doing something as mundane as leaving a church, and then charge them to see the results - in a fairground booth, a show in the local town hall or a music hall variety show.

But the mundanity of the activity did not matter. In an age before camcorders preserved even the most trivial event, appearing on film was an exciting novelty, and the relationship between spectator and film something quite different from what we are used to now. Audiences would shout out as they recognised themselves or friends and felt a close connection with what appeared on the screen. Film-goers did not worship film stars: instead, they often were the stars. Films were not manufactured in remote studios but were intensely local affairs: an audience could watch a film being made - and appear in it - and later the same day attend its screening.

To maximise potential audiences, cameras were sent to events where large numbers of people congregated, and this is what makes Mitchell and Kenyon films so valuable to social historians. They did what history writing often fails at - capturing and fixing for future generations the activity of the masses. A century on, we can see for ourselves "20,000 people entering Lord Armstrong's Elswick works", as one film was billed, and scrutinise faces in the crowd observing the Northumberland Fusiliers' "Fighting fifth just returned from South Africa, Lieutenant Sturgess at their head".

In the reactions to the presence of cameras - waving, the odd obscene gesture, children disappearing out of frame only to bob back in from the other side, and a great deal of bashful, bewildered smiling - one can also trace the cautious reception accorded the new medium in the days before permanent cinemas.

What emerges is a portrait of an age sometimes familiar, sometimes impossibly remote from our own. The 55 films of football matches made between 1901 and 1907 feature teams still active, and show that pitch-side advertising is not a recent phenomenon. But the differences are glaring. Crowds were almost exclusively male: not a female or family is in sight. And no one would have dreamt of turning up without a hat: the occasional boater or bowler interrupts an ocean of flat caps.

Numerous films testify to the relaxed, vibrant street life that was the norm in the days before motor traffic. Conversations take place in the public highway. The street is purged of furniture such as traffic lights and markings, and people seem confident and at ease in their public spaces. Slow speeds of traffic encouraged the indulgence of a widespread passion for processing and watching others do so. Royal visits and military parades jostled for attention with processions by churches, schools, temperance groups, trade unions and friendly societies.

Despite the notorious fragility of nitrate film, the Mitchell and Kenyon collection is in remarkably good condition. The result is disconcerting:a vivid record of faces long since dead caught in a moment of expression or feeling. It is indeed, as the book's title claims, a lost world. But now, to a degree, it is refound.

Christopher Wood is a freelance writer on film and music.