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A Lightning Sketch
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Wikipedia article
'A Lightning Sketch' was a series of four 1896 French short silent films directed by Georges Mlis and released by his Star Film Company. Each film showed an artistvery probably Mlis himselfdrawing a caricature of a notable political figure in less than a minute.
Three similar films were also made at about the same time, in August 1896, by the Anglo-American filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton, as a series called 'Blackton Sketches'; Blackton would later make another film in the same vein, 'The Enchanted Drawing' (1900). Mlis returned to sketching on film in his 1903 short 'The Untamable Whiskers', in which the process of drawing comic faces on a blackboard was undercranked so as to seem to occur with great speed. Numerous political caricatures by Mlis, presumably similar to those made in the 'A Lightning Sketch' films, survive in the collection of the Centre national du cinma.
All four films in the 'A Lightning Sketch' series are currently presumed lost.
Summary
The following table provides the number assigned to each film in the Star Film Company catalogues; the original English and French titles; and the subject of the drawing made in each film.Release data from ; subject identification from .
References
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