Carmencita
Carmencita
NR | 14 March 1894 (USA)
Carmencita Trailers

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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PlatinumRead

Just so...so bad

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Matialth

Good concept, poorly executed.

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Catherina

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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kobe1413

"Carmencita" is a short video of a woman dancing. She is obviously a veteran performer, probably from Broadway. She does some pretty nice moves, especially from 1894, where simple spinning was enough to entertain the masses. When compared to scenes such as the "Imperial Japanese Dance" or the "Sioux Ghost Dance", Carmencita shows a little bit of flash.This was another collaboration between W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise. They recorded this short film for Edison Laboratories. They were constantly looking for subjects to shoot. They shot many different acts from the vaudeville scene, from dancers to gymnasts.

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Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)

Here and there you find a short movie which may have been not considerably better if they had music and color available back in the last years of the 19th century, but this one is pretty much the exact opposite. Carmencita is still showing us a nice dance and giving us a beautiful smile, but the effect of this one would have been so much better with the wild Spanish or Latin music she was listening and colors that make her gorgeous dress look even more majestic. Still it's an okay early effort from Dickson and a good watch for silent film enthusiasts with an unusually high running-time of 45 seconds for Dickson's movies from that year. I t looks like so much fun how she's wildly shaking her arms and legs and I'd definitely have loved to join in in her dancing.

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Michael_Elliott

Carmencita (1894) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Infamous Edison short, which features the title dancer, quite famous at the time, doing one of her dances. The film runs only 24-seconds but who today could really imagine how much trouble this film would get into with such a short running time. The movie was famous because it came under a lot of censorship issues wherever it would be played. The most famous incident happened in Boston where it was pulled from theaters after a preacher complained that it was sinful. We only see a brief bit of the dancer's leg (below the knee) so that should tell you something. There's certainly nothing great here but from a historical standpoint this is a very important film.

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F Gwynplaine MacIntyre

Here's a perfect example of the pitfalls of writing about films: especially films from the earliest days of the cinema. The other IMDb'ers who have posted reviews of Carmencita's performance for Thomas Edison's Kinetograph camera are apparently reviewing footage from Edison Motion Picture #28, which has been reissued on DVD as part of "Edison: The Invention of the Movies". Well, I am likewise reviewing Carmencita's performance for Edison's Kinetograph. However, the performance I saw (and which I'm reviewing) was a different performance by the same dancer, filmed on the same occasion -- the second week of March 1894 -- but photographed on a different negative and not included in the DVD.I saw this film (the one I'm reviewing, mind) in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy. The print screened at Sacile was retrieved from the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield, England. (WKL Dickson, who shot many films for Edison, was an Englishman; he shipped prints of many of his Edison films to Britain.) When the Sheffield print was found, it was at first assumed to be one more copy of the existing Carmencita footage (the one on the DVD). However, after restoration, it was discovered that this was a 'lost' movie which no living person knew had ever existed in the first place: a completely different take of Carmencita's performance, differing significantly from the 'known' version. Since Edison's catalogue lists only one version, this 'lost' film has been provisionally titled "Carmencita #2" and catalogued as EMP 28.1.This is certainly not a 'belly dance', despite a previous IMDb'er's comment. Carmencita's performance here is virtually identical to the one in the DVD version, with one interesting difference: in the version found at Sheffield and screened at Sacile (the one I saw), the señorita concludes her performance by curtseying to the camera (or to its operator?) and offering a moue.Frame-by-frame comparisons make it clear that these are two separate 'takes': two completely different pieces of footage of the same dancer giving similar but not identical performances. I'd be keen to learn which one was shot first. Carmencita's acknowledgment in the Sheffield version might imply that this was the conclusion of her performance, therefore the final take. Or perhaps this was her first take, and Dickson may have felt that Carmencita's gesture -- appropriate enough for a live audience watching a stage performance -- was inappropriate for a movie, and he required her to do a retake. Barring authorisation for a trip yesterwards to March 1894 (grease up the time-portal!), it's unlikely that anyone will ever know which version was shot first.On its own merits as an historic artefact, I'll rate "Carmencita #2" 6 points out of 10 ... plus one point extra (7 total) because this film and its twin sister -- placed side by side -- serve as a caution to those who would review old-time movies, or who would criticise other reviewers' film scholarship: sometimes the version which you saw, and the version which I saw, really are NOT the same movie!

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