An excellent selection of films made over the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign which show how filmmaking was transformed from the pursuit of a handful of showmen, chemists and amateur enthusiasts into a dynamic industry, and from fairground novelty into the greatest entertainment of the age. The films, available for free via the BFI PLayer, have been organised into eight categories: Inventing Film Language, Victoria’s New Media Pioneers, Victorian Entertainment, England Expects, Pomp and Circumstance, The Victorian Street and Victorian Mysteries.