Fred Ott's Sneeze
| Fred Ott's Sneeze | |
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| Directed by | William K.L. Dickson |
| Produced by | William K.L. Dickson |
| Starring | Fred Ott |
| Distributed by | Edison Manufacturing Company |
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Release dates
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Running time
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5 seconds |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent |
Fred Ott's Sneeze (also known as Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze) is an 1894 American, short, black-and-white, silent documentary film shot by William K.L. Dickson and starring Fred Ott. It was the first motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.[1]
In the five-second film one of Thomas Edison's assistants, Fred Ott, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. According to the Library of Congress, "It was filmed for publicity purposes as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's Weekly".[2]
In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[3]
Production
The film was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, which had begun making films in 1890 under the direction of Dickson, one of the earliest film pioneers. It was filmed within the Black Maria studio at West Orange, New Jersey, in the USA, which was America's first movie studio. It was filmed between January 2, 1894 and January 7, 1894[2] and was displayed, at the time, through the means of a Kinetoscope.
Current status
As a film produced prior to 1923 its copyright has now expired and it is freely available on the Internet to download. Originally, the film was submitted to the Library of Congress as a "paper print" (a photographic record of each frame of the film) for copyright purposes. A digital copy is now kept by the Library of Congress and can be viewed on their American Memory website.[2] This short film has been featured at The 30th Annual Academy Awards, and was included as part of the TV documentary The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies[4]
See also
References
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to [[commons:Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).|Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).]]. |
- Library of Congress
- Video of Fred Ott's Sneeze YouTube
- Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Fred Ott's Sneeze at IMDb
- Fred Ott's Sneeze at AllMovie
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- 1894 films
- Pages with broken file links
- Commons category link from Wikidata
- American films
- American documentary films
- American black-and-white films
- American silent short films
- Thomas Edison
- Films directed by William Kennedy Dickson
- Films shot in New Jersey
- 1890s documentary films
- United States National Film Registry films
