Lentorama 2014: We're Ready for Your Close-Up, Your Holiness

Day 3: Pope Leo XIII Being Carried in Chair Through Upper Loggia, No. 101

The first documentary in our series, this short from the American Mutoscope Company is exactly what it says it is: a film of Leo XIII in a chair that's being carried through a doorway. American Mutoscope is better known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which would later just be known as Biograph Studios, a launching pad for many of film's early stars (including Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore) and directors (like D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett).

But it made its earliest mark with one to two minute documentary shorts of things like an old Italian man being dragged around in a chair. For what its worth, this 1898 film made Leo the first pope to ever appear on film.