First Known Film With Live Recorded Sound.

Very rare and historical film footage of Dickson Experimental Sound Film. September 1894 - April 2, 1895. Filmed at Thomas Edison's "Edison's Black Maria Studio. The Black Maria (pronounced ma-RYE-uh) was Thomas Edison's movie production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It is widely referred to as "America's First Movie Studio."The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895. It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first example of a motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison. The actual sound to this film, sadly, was not a part of the video I discovered.



In his book The Celluloid Closet (1981), film historian Vito Russo discusses the film, claiming, without attribution, that it was titled The Gay Brothers. Russo's unsupported naming of the film has been adopted widely online and in at least three books, and his assertions that the film's content is homosexual are frequently echoed. In addition to there being no evidence for the title Russo gives the film, in fact the word "gay" was not generally used as a synonym for "homosexual" at the time the film was made. There is also no evidence that Dickson intended to present the men—presumably employees of the Edison studio—as a romantic couple. Given the lyrics of the song Dickson plays, which describes life at sea without women, it is most plausible that he intended a joke about the virtually all-male environment of the Black Maria. Still, this may be seen as one of the earliest examples of same-sex imagery in the cinema. An excerpt of the film is included in the documentary based on Russo's book, also titled The Celluloid Closet (1995).
Source For Background Information:Wickipedia.