On the centenary of his death, admirers hope to win recognition for the Bristol photographer’s motion picture camera
It’s a strange fact, but British inventor William Friese-Greene is as well-known among serious film buffs for not having invented cinema as he is for inventing it. Now, on the centenary of his sudden death at 65, mid-flow at a meeting of film distributors, admirers of this controversial pioneer from Bristol are at the centre of a new drive to establish his international legacy once again.
Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and George Méliès, the Frenchman whose story was told by Martin Scorsese in the hit 2011 film Hugo.
