Watch Changing the Flag at Puerto Rico (1898) Online Free
A staged actuality attributed to the Biograph Company, produced during the Spanish–American War. The film depicts a Jack Tar climbing a mast in Puerto Rico, tearing down the Spanish flag, and replacing it with the American Stars and Stripes. Contemporary accounts note that such scenes brought U.S. audiences to their feet in patriotic fervor, serving as powerful wartime propaganda. The film is generally considered lost, with its existence recorded in writings by Erik Barnouw and other historians of early cinema.
More Like This
Beam Me Up, Sulu
In 1985, Star Trek's George Takei joined a group of dedicated fans to make a student film deep in the California forest—only for the footage to mysteriously vanish. Nearly 40 years later, Beam Me Up, Sulu unearths this lost film, revealing not just a piece of fan history but a broader story of representation, resilience, and the ongoing fight for inclusion in media and society. The film was released as Yorktown: A Time to Heal (2022)
2025
God Is a Woman
In 1975 French Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau traveled to Panama to make a film on the indigenous island-dwelling Kuna people. Accompanied by his wife and their daughter, Gaisseau lived with the Kuna for a year, gaining their trust and filming their most intimate ceremonies. He promised to share the resulting film with the community, but that never happened. Fifty years later, the Kunas are still waiting to discover “their” film, now a legend passed down from the elders to the new generation. One day, a hidden copy is found in Paris…While uncovering this fascinating story with humility and warmth, Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot succeeds in capturing a true sense of culture and place. The result is simultaneously a cautionary tale raising questions around how and why documentaries are made and for whom, and a testament to the power of what it means to see yourself on the big screen.
2024
Wise Guys: The Lost Show
During the COVID-19 pandemic, two college students set out to make a revolutionary television show. The pilot episode was uncovered and presented alongside exclusive interviews with the cast and crew.
2022
Sperduti nel buio
Documentary about the lost 1914 film "Sperduti nel buio". Film historian Denis Lotto journeys across Europe following the trail of the lost movie.
2014
Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days
Marilyn Monroe's final project, "Something's Got to Give", has become one of the most talked about unfinished films in history. The story of the film and Marilyn's last days were seemingly lost… until now. Through interviews, never-before-seen footage and an edited reconstruction of "Something's Got to Give", Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days provides a definitive and fascinating look at the last act in the life of the world's most famous and tragic superstar.
2001
Sex Stars
Sex star gives an explosive behind the scenes view of the people who make sexual fantasies come true on the silver screen. Sex Stars is the first feature documentary made by Lech Kowalski.
1976
Time in the Sun
Second attempt to create a feature film out of the 200,000-plus feet of film which Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein shot during 1931-32 in Mexico for American socialist author Upton Sinclair, his wife and a small company of investors. The projected film, to be called "Que Viva Mexico", was never completed due to exhaustion of funds and Stalin's demand that Eisenstein return to the USSR (he had been absent since 1929). The first attempt at editing the footage, in the USA, resulted in "Thunder Over Mexico", released in 1934. In 1940, Marie Seton, from the UK, acquired some of the footage from the Sinclairs in an attempt to make a better cutting according to Eisenstein's skeletal outline for the proposed film. This film has apparently been lost.
1940
Death Day
During his adventure in Mexico, Sergei Eisenstein made footage of a Mexican "Death Day" celebration for inclusion in his "Que Viva Mexico!" film project. When the 200,000-plus feet of film he eventually exposed in Mexico was first attempted to be made into a feature film, "Thunder Over Mexico", the producers excluded the Death Day material for subsequent compilation as an independent short subject. Silent with music track and explanatory English intertitles.
1934
India Speaks
A documentary of explorer Richard Halliburton's travels on the Indian sub-continent, featuring a mix of real and staged footage.
1933
Fashion News
In this color short, Albert Conti brings Mary Carlisle inside a studio to see some new outfits available at J.J. Haggarty’s, Los Angeles.
1930
The Surprise Fight
Episode #5 in the Flying Fists series featuring real-life boxer Benny Leonard.
1925
Hitting Hard
The second of six episodes in the "Flying Fists" boxing series sometimes listed as "Hit Hard" starring pugilist Benny Leonard.
1925
The Great Universal Mystery
A promotional one-reel film promoting the stars of Universal Pictures.
1914
The Alaska-Siberian Expedition
Captain Kleinschmidt leads an expedition sponsored by the Carnegie Museum to the arctic regions of Alaska and Siberia to study the natives and the animal life.
1912
A Solax Celebration
The good people of the Solax community realize that they have cause to make merry before the New Year because the Almighty has guided their breadwinning footsteps toward the Solax Studio's happy atmosphere, bank together like the big happy family they are, to give expression to their happiness in the form of a gift to the immediate cause of their good fortune and sunshine.
1912
Der neue Expressdampfer Saint Louis
Short film about an express steamer
1899
A Football Match at Newcastle-on-Tyne
A Football Match at Newcastle-on-Tyne refers to a one-minute film recorded in October 1896 by English film pioneer Robert William Paul. According to several film and sports historians, it was the first known recording of a football match.
1896
Quartette
Scene from a Trilby-themed stage play. Lost.
1895
Horse Shoeing
One of the pictures to be seen in the machine, for example, was that of a blacksmith shop in which two men were working, one shoeing a horse, the other heating iron at the forge. One would be seen to drive the nail into the shoe of the horse's hoof, to change his position and every movement needed in the work was clearly shown as if the object was in real (life). In fact, the whole routine of the two men's labor and their movements for the day was presented to the view of the observer.
1893
Brighton Street Scene
Lost film from 1888, directed by William Friese-Greene.
1888