Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

cricket crockett I have been to many pow wows in real life, but I have never seen a Native American dancer with a giant set of black tail feathers sticking up from his butt a mile high like the chunky dancer in this short Edison film. The other two dancers have more recognizable feather gear, in the form of about two head feathers each. The dancer in the forefront most often takes a lower, almost snakish approach to his performance, which put me in mind of some of the old Warners Brothers cartoons portraying Native Americans as savages who could slither like eels to sneak up on the white folk that we used to watch in the trailer growing up when the babysitter was over. Ten generations of kids have been exposed to those cartoons, which you still can buy sets of in the dollar stores for a buck, so it stands to reason that the original animators of these films may have been drawn from the preceding five generations of kids who were exposed to these Edison Kinetographs growing up. I guess therez a saying that what goes around comes around.P.S.--Drummers never get any respect. I know from my pow wow experience that Native Americans do not dance without drumming, but from the information on this site you would have no idea that there are 2 NI drummers behind the 3 dancers in this flick!

tavm Well, here's another early film from The Edison Company that depicts something that was popular during that time. In this case, it's the "Buffalo Dance" as we see three American Indians dancing in the Black Maria studio seemingly conscious of being on camera the whole time while two other of their tribe are playing instruments-drums-as accompaniment. They're all from "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show", the one chronicled in Irving Berlin's Broadway show and movie Annie Get Your Gun where Annie Oakley and Frank Butler fight and fall in love. Since this is only a few seconds, my rating is mainly based on how fascinating a document this was and how audiences might have reacted when they watched this on their kinetoscopes-those peepshow machines that you twirl on one side that are probably still available for viewing at Walt Disney World for a penny. I just found this on Internet Archive. Probably the earliest thing I've reviewed here on IMDb.

Snow Leopard As one of several features that the Edison Company made of performers from the Buffalo Bill Wild West exhibition, this was probably interesting to its original viewers as a chance to see a more or less authentic 'Indian dance'. As is often the case with the earliest movies, it's of interest now mainly for other reasons.Like the companion feature "Sioux Ghost Dance" made at the same time, this movie shows several Sioux performing one of their rituals for the camera. This "Buffalo Dance" differs slightly in having only three dancers, while two others accompany them with drums.What stands out in this one is the unfeigned interest in the camera that the dancers show, frequently staring right at it. It certainly doesn't seem to fit in with the dance itself, and it looks like an unintended but honest reaction to being filmed - which was just as novel an experience for these Sioux as it would have been for anyone else at the time.These frequent stares at the camera, plus the somewhat artificial background of Edison's 'Black Maria' studio, make it hard to determine to what degree the movie portrays the dance as it would have been done on its own. But it does give this little feature a point of interest.

PeterJordan Another clip from the shots taken on September 24th 1894 in Edison's Black Maria studio with William Heise behind the camera. This 15 second (20 fps) clip features the three named Native American dancers (from Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show) plus three drummers. It is interesting to note that the three dancers are particulary aware of the camera and appear to act to it on occasion, although this may be merely a feature of the Buffalo dance itself or quite possibly under receipt of direction from Movies first ever acting coach/director behind the camera.