An 1898 film by filmmaker William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson is brought to life. On a September day in 1998 pointed a camera at the afternoon crowd on Scheveningen Boulevard and pressed record. What he captured was unremarkable by design – people strolling, watching, being seen at one of The Hague’s most fashionable seafront addresses. Nobody was performing for history. They were just having a day out.
Dickson was shooting for the British Mutoscope & Biograph Company at the height of the Belle Époque. The women in the crowd are dressed in full late-Victorian style – elaborate hats, corseted silhouettes, parasols tilted against the North Sea light. The men in top hats and frock coats. The grand hotel façade rising behind the ornate boulevard kiosk. It’s a world that vanished within a generation.
I’ve restored this 1898 film to 4K 60fps, added natural colour frame by frame, and built an immersive soundscape from scratch. Not to dramatise it – to close the distance. To let you simply stand there for a few minutes in September 1898 and watch the afternoon go by.
Watch the full restoration of this 1898 film above.