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About
Films from the first fifty years of the movies, free to watch, gathered from the archives and channels that hold the prints.
1,353 films, made between 1895 and 1939. The 25 collections put some of them in an order and say why.
Comedies, serials, horror, newsreels, trick films, documentaries and the first talkies. Most are silent. Some last a few minutes; some fill an evening. Each film page plays the best print we could find and says who made it and who is in it.
The Reading Room sets essays, interviews and archive material beside the films they discuss.
Every film here is in the public domain, or was released by its owners for anyone to show. Copyright on a film runs out: in the United States, a film published more than 95 years ago is free to watch, copy and screen, and many later films lost their protection when no one renewed it.
The prints themselves live with the people who keep them: archives and restorers on YouTube, the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons. Kino-polis plays the film from where it is held and names the source on the film's page.
On the home page, Start here holds six films for a first evening, the shortest first.
Or start from how you want to feel:
Or walk the years from 1895 onward in By year, and see what changed and when.
Every film plays without one. A free account keeps My List, the films you have watched, your place in a film, your ratings and favourites, and lists of your own. Your email address is used to sign in and to reset a password, and for nothing else.
Found a public domain film on YouTube that belongs here? Send the link. We check the film's rights and the print before it goes in.
Kino-polis is made by Tim McElreath. Write to info@kino-polis.com with a correction, a better print or a question.
Cast, crew, posters and some synopses come from The Movie Database (TMDB). This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.