Silvograph - Arthur Cheetham 1865-1937 Pioneer Film-Maker
Silvograph - Arthur Cheetham 1865-1937 Pioneer Film-Maker
  • Author: Philip Lloyd
  • ISBN: 9781845242725)
  • Publication March 2018
  • Format: Paperback, 215x137 mm, 160 pages
Arthur Cheetham was a key figure in the early days of cinema in Wales. He was screening films to audiences within 12 months of the Lumières' pioneering Paris film-show of December 1895 and started to produce his own as early as January 1898.

Table of Contents:
They would be augmented with the work of UK, continental and US contemporaries in his ‘entertainments’, held both at his adopted seaside home-town of Rhyl and during extensive winter tours in England and Wales. Apart from films, these ‘entertainments’ would include songs, magic-lantern slides, gramophone records, instrumental solos and duets, sketches and ventriloquism. In 1906 he joined the ranks of early cinema proprietors, first at Rhyl, then at Aberystwyth, Colwyn Bay, Manchester and Eccles. 'Silvograph, Arthur Cheetham (1895−1937), Pioneer Film-maker' also highlights this colourful character’s activities as phrenologist, medical electrician, printer, publisher and photographer.

Author Biography:
Philip Lloyd is a native of the former coal-mining valleys of south-eastern Wales but lived in Rhyl for over 20 years, when he first became interested in Cheetham. A graduate of the Universities of Bristol and Wales, he has enjoyed a varied career in the education and museum services of Clwyd and Flintshire and now lives in the county town of Mold. He has lectured on Rhyl’s pioneer film-maker and has spoken about him on radio and television. is book is the culmination of decades of study and research into the career of one person set in the wider context of early cinema.

Further Information:
‘Cheetham, for all his hyperbole and self-promotion, retains a secure place in any history – as the first film-maker within the country to shoot events specifically to screen them in his own shows ... His films nestle comfortably in the mainstream of early British shorts, providing insights into the popular subject matter and technical shortcomings of the day.’ David Berry, 'Wales & Cinema, the First Hundred Years'