The Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was a special pavilion at the 1900 Paris World's Fair which featured filmed performances presented with sound via wax cylinder recordings. Many of these short films were also presented in hand-tinted color. The performances ranged from theatre (Coquelin the eldest, Gabrielle Réjane, Sarah Bernhardt, Félicia Mallet), opera & operetta (Mariette Sully, Emile Cossira, Jeanne Hatto, Mily-Meyer, Désiré Pougaud), to café concert & music hall variety (Footit et Chocolat, Mason and Forbes, Little Tich, Brunin, Polin, Jules Moy) and dance (Blanche and Louise Mante from the Paris Opera, Carlotta Zambelli, Michel Vasquez, Rosita Mauri, Jeanne Chasles, Achille Viscusi, Christine Kerf, Cléo de Mérode).

A man misses his train due to his clothes turning into other types of clothes.

A cleverly conceived picture of a little boy and girl with building blocks. The little girl has erected a pretty structure, which the boy proceeds to demolish with pokes of his fingers. When the demolition of the house is completed, the film is shown in reverse, and the little building comes back to its original form in a most marvellous manner.

A family sits down to enjoy a meal that ends up being fraught with complications.

The only film record ever made of the original star of Rostand's famous play performing a scene from his most famous role. It is accompanied by a sound-on-cylinder recording of Coquelin's voice reciting one of Cyrano's speeches.

At the first news of the disast by cyclone and tidal wave that devastated Galveston on Saturday, September 8th, 1900, we equipped a party of photographers and sent them by special train to the scene of the ruins. Arriving at the scene of desolation shortly after the storm had swept over the city, our party succeeded, at the risk of life and limb, in taking about a thousand feet of motion pictures, although Galveston was under martial law and photographers were shot down at sight by the excited police. The series, taken as a whole, gives a definite idea of the most terrible disaster since the Johnstown flood of 1889.

A client has trouble listening to the photographer's instructions.

Hand-tinted film of a couple dance on a stage.

Madame Ondine performs a serpentine dance surrounded by big cats.

A former carpenter who became one of the first cameramen in Japanese cinema history, Tsuchiya Tsuneji travelled to North America to help in the construction of a Japanese garden and tea house at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. After learning film techniques on how to operate a camera and develop film in December 1898 he returned to Japan carrying an Urban Bioscope camera (both a projector and camera). Taking inspiration from boxing match film actualities popular in the United States he conceived the idea of filming sumo wrestlers at the Ryogoku Ekoin. This resulted in his first film Ekoin Natsu-basho Ozumo.

A film in which limbless Nikolai Kobelkoff demonstrates a series of tasks, from aiming a pistol to performing gymnastics. Kobelkoff was born without arms and legs but persevered, becoming an international star in the early 20th century as a "Human Torso".

The entire story of Christmastide is here depicted. The scene opens in a large boudoir of an apparently wealthy man's home. His children, assisted by their governess, are about to retire. Before lying down they hang up their stockings on the edge of the bed. The picture changes and night appears. We see the housetops of the town and angels are flying about depositing packages in each of the chimneys. (Edison Catalog)

A black and white short in which a moving rear facing camera documents people running towards it on the street.

A dancer personifying Winter, dances in the snow.

A man dreams he is flirting with an attractive young lady, then he wakes up in bed next to his wife.

"This funny individual will make you laugh until your sides ache. He is funny in all his actions, yet when he puts on his shoes you can imagine the noise he can make when he dances an ordinary clog. The shoes referred to are made of some elastic material which enables Little Tich to bow almost to the floor without bending his legs, the spring in the shoes carrying him down and up again. He places his hat on the floor and, leaning over on the toes of his wonderful shoes, dips his head into the hat and comes up without having to move from the spot or to bend his legs. He is a comical looking sight at best, being made up to suit the part, and he will make you laugh whether you want to or not."

A divinely inspired peasant woman becomes an army captain for France and then is martyred after she is captured.

A cartoonist defies reality when he draws objects that become three-dimensional after he lifts them off his sketch pad.

While our photographers were crossing the Atlantic Ocean a most wonderful and sensational picture was secured, showing a storm at sea. The picture was secured by lashing the camera to the after bridge of the Kaiserine Maria Theresa, of the North German Lloyd Line, during one of its roughest voyages. The most wonderful storm picture ever photographed. Taken at great risk. (Edison Films, 1901)

A woman in ballet slippers wearing a large white hat and a long white dress - with ruffles, puffy sleeves and petticoats - dances across water with roiling waves behind her. She holds the edges of the skirt with her hands, lifting and twirling, sometimes exposing her bloomers and a dark garter on one leg. Her style combines ballet with the exuberant kicks and twirls of a burlesque dance hall. With churning waves behind her, the water seems to wash beneath her feet. The film of the dancer, "M'lle. Cathrina Bartho" (1899), is superimposed on that of the water, "Upper Rapids, from Bridge" (1896).

Columbine resists Pierrette's courting in favour of Harlequin in this hand-coloured short by Alice Guy.

A boy looks through glasses at various objects, seen magnified.

An early trick film where a car explodes and body parts fall from the sky. A policeman witnesses and attempts to piece the remains back together.

Film produced by William K. Dickson’s British Mutoscope and Biograph Company.

A single shot of a fleet of warships at sea, with a sunset sky superimposed from another sequence to complete the effect.

A combination of the picture entitled "The Ballet of the Ghosts," and a surf scene; the resulting effect being that the ghostly figures rise up out of the surf and come to the shore, cast their draperies aside and dance a few steps of the ballet, after which they again take up their draperies, and having covered themselves, retreat into the waves.

In one glorious point-of-view shot, a vehicle dashes full-speed into an ill-starred passer-by.

A burlesque on the work of highwaymen in Chicago. An elderly gentleman is sandbagged and robbed by a thug, who inadvertently leaves some money on the victim's prostrate body. A policeman shows up.

A chimney sweep and a miller become involved in a street fight. The sweep has a bag of soot on his back, and the miller a bag of flour.

Yet another factory gate exit film from Mitchell and Kenyon.

A band-leader assembles an orchestra by mystifying means.

As if by magic, a weary traveller trying to undress, is foiled by his mutinous clothes as they teleport and multiply before his eyes, refusing to stay on the clothing rack.

An elderly gentleman in a silk hat sits on a stool in front of a store on the main street of town. He has a telescope that focuses on the ankle of a young woman who is a short distance away. Her husband catches the gent looking. What will the two men do now?

The magic of a real solar eclipse filmed on 28 May, 1900 by a famous magician, Nevil Maskelyne, while on an expedition by The British Astronomical Association to North Carolina.