The Kinora Films

These films from 1912, shot on a Kinora machine, are the earliest known examples of English folk dance on film. They feature sisters Maud and Helen Karpeles, co-founders of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, along with Cecil Sharp, another co-founder of the Society and Godfather of the English Folk Dance Revival, and George Butterworth, who but for the First World War, when he died during the Battle of the Somme, would have been Sharp’s successor rather than Helen’s husband Douglas Kennedy. The films are currently being exhibited as part of the Canning Town Folk exhibition: see © English Folk Dance and Song Society