FACES from East Lancashire's past - schoolchildren, mill workers, brewery draymen, soldiers and celebrating crowds - came alive again in "priceless" history rescued from a rubbish skip.

For in a special showing marking the centenary of the first report - in November, 1897 - of pioneer Blackburn film-makers Sagar Mitchell's and James Kenyon's early experiments, hundreds of feet of forgotten film that turned countless ordinary people into cinema stars flickered on to the screen for the first time in living memory.

One of the specialities of the duo was capturing local street and "factory gate" scenes on the movie cameras they made, with the films being used by travelling showmen to attract crowds to their cinematograph booths that were the novelty of the era.

Thus it was that women weavers in clogs and shawls and men in mufflers and caps could once again be seen emerging from Hornby's Brookhouse Mill in Blackburn, 97 years after Mitchell and Kenyon first filmed them.

So, too, were the excited children who went to the town's St Joseph's and St Barnabas' schools in 1901 and 1905 brought to life again as were the wagon-drivers of 1900 at Nuttall's Lion Brewery and the East Lancashire Militia on their march up Preston New Road - and many more. But it was only by luck that two cinema historians, optician Peter Worden and his friend Robin Whalley, were able to stage their centenary tribute at Blackburn Arts Club to the town's first film-makers.

For the precious reels - dating from 1899 to 1907 - on which a wealth of East Lancashire's social history lay hidden and forgotten for at least 50 years, were on the brink of being thrown away when they were rescued.

"I found them in 1994 in a town centre property which was being renovated," said Peter.

"They were actually on the point of being thrown in a skip, which would have been a tragedy because they are quite priceless."

"Mitchell and Kenyon went on to be the most important cinematographers in the North West. No-one else in the region was making films in that period."

Robin added: "They represent 20 per cent of the known Victorian moving film left in the country." As well as capturing street scenes all over the North, Mitchell, who was in business in Northgate, Blackburn, as a manufacturer of photographic apparatus, and former cabinet-maker Kenyon made comedies and dramas, including faked incidents from the Boer War, filmed on the moors outside Blackburn, using local amateurs and professional artists appearing at the town's theatres.

They were also "newsreel" pioneers, filming Queen Victoria's funeral and the Coronation procession of King Edward VII. Among the events they captured, shown at the centenary tribute, were the opening of Accrington's electric tramway in 1907, a Blackburn Rovers v Sheffield United match at Ewood Park earlier that year and the unveiling of Queen Victoria's statue on Blackburn Boulevard in 1905.

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