SILENT FILM IN THE BAY

What are the roots of silent cinema in the bay area? How did it play an important role in early cinema history? What famous personalities made films here?

   The old fashioned East Bay hamlet of Niles, in other words just a section of Fremont, California. About three blocks down, bounded by the hills on one side and a creek on the other, with a few blocks of the early 20th century downtown storefronts, it would be any village left and abandoned by the railroad years ago. The story of Niles was an opportunity for the Bay Area to become the film capital of the world. However, before Niles, one could say that the Bay Area was the birthplace of cinema itself. Even though the beginning of the Bay Area film industry didn't play out the way it did for Hollywood, to this day the pioneering spirit the Niles Essanay Museum and Stanford’s Muybridge collection celebrate is alive and satisfactory in the hands and work of Bay Area filmmakers.