What starts as a somewhat creaky investigation into the blue-plaque claim that Louis Le Prince “probably” made the world’s first short films in Leeds in 1888 mutates into something altogether more moving and mysterious as director/presenter David Nicholas Wilkinson is consumed by the magic of the moving image. Arguing convincingly that Le Prince’s experiments beat both Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers to the punch, Wilkinson traces the strange story of his subject’s disappearance from the world, and from the history books. Although some of his on-screen discoveries seem staged (“Look, here it is!”), there’s no faking the passion and sincerity that Wilkinson brings to the few fleeting seconds of footage at the heart of this story. Anyone who enjoyed Thomas Lawes’s The Last Projectionist will swoon at this insider’s view of the first movie cameras, while others will be captivated by a flickering story that blends intrigue, industrial espionage, and possibly even murder.
