Exhibition: Animatograph! How cinema was born in Haringey

Films - or ‘animated photography’ as they were originally called - first hit the screen in 1896. It was a young electrical engineer born in Holloway 150 years ago, Robert Paul, who led the way. Paul unveiled his own Animatograph projector on the same day in London as the famous Lumière cinématographe, and went on to achieve star billing in half a dozen London music halls that year.

He knew these first short films weren’t enough to hold public attention. In 1898, he and his wife Ellen bought land in Muswell Hill to build Britain’s first film studio. The films they made over the next years laid the basis of nearly everything we know in cinema – comedies, chases, dramas, and magical ‘trick films’.

This exhibition tells the story of how Robert and Ellen Paul really created cinema here in Haringey. The first American and French filmmakers took a lot of their ideas from the Pauls’ pioneering work, successfully exported all over the world for the next ten years.

Robert Paul was also a pioneer in electrical science, with many key inventions to his name. He continued this work after retiring from cinema – even inventing a portable iron lung in 1936 to help sufferers from diptheria and polio.