Carmencita (1894)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

William K.L. Dickson

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

Performing on what looks like a small wooden stage, wearing a dress with a hoop skirt and white high-heeled pumps, Carmencita does a dance with kicks and twirls, a smile always on her face. |

Plot Keywords:

Dance | Dancer | Character Name In Title

Cast

Carmencita

...

Herself

Runtime:

1 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

West Orange, New Jersey, USA

Company:

Edison Manufacturing Company

Trivia:

Professional dancer Carmencita was the first woman to step before a motion picture camera in America.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Indie Sex: Censored (2007) (TV)

one-shot record of a belly dancer

"Carmencita Dancing," one of a series of Edison short films featuring circus and vaudeville acts, displayed the... um... "talents" of a zaftig belly-dancer who agreed to undulate before the camera of the famous "Black Maria" studio. The dance was originally intended to be played in a Kinetoscope, a single -person arcade viewer connected to Edison's more famous invention, the phonograph. Through a pair of crude headphones, the latter device supplied an asynchronous soundtrack of "hootchie-cootchie" music. The Kinetograph camera here employed is so new -- even to its inventors -- that director Dickson has drastically "overcranked" the film, unintentionally producing one of the first examples of slow-motion. Carmencita's titillating movements were considered by many to be scandalous. Thus, the film prompted some of the earliest discussions of film censorship.