Person
Charles Urban
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Charles Urban is an American producer, director, cinematographer and editor born April 14, 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio (United States), died August 29, 1942 in Brighton (United Kingd…
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Charles Urban is an American producer, director, cinematographer and editor born April 14, 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio (United States), died August 29, 1942 in Brighton (United Kingdom). Urban made many types of non-fiction films at the Charles Urban Trading Company, including travel films, war reports, exploration films, sports films, commercials and natural history films. Filmmakers who worked for him include Jack Avery, Joseph Rosenthal, Charles Rider Noble, Harold Mease Lomas, mountaineer Frank Ormiston-Smith, George Rogers, J. Gregory Mantle, and naturalist F. Percy Smith. Smith directed one of Urban's most successful films, The Balancing Bluebottle (1908), which featured a fly balancing objects such as a wine cork with its legs. In 1906, George Albert Smith and Charles Urban created a new process in England, Kinémacolor, which recreated the impression of (partial) colors in cinema. Marketed at the beginning of 1911, the process was used in some 250 short films. In Paris, in 1913, Charles Urban built the Théâtre Édouard VII, which was above all a cinema using Kinémacolor. He sold his room to Alphonse Franck the following year. Urban remained in the United States after the war to re-establish himself as a producer of educational films through his umbrella company, Urban Motion Picture Industries Inc. He produced the Charles cinemagazine series Urban Movie Chats (launched in 1919) and Kineto Review (launched 1921), and made the feature documentaries The Four Seasons (1921) and Evolution (1923). He built a large studio in Irvington, New York, where he planned to introduce a new color film system called Kinekrom, based on the old Kinemacolor, and to distribute educational films on disc using the Spirograph. However, his business interests collapsed in 1924 and he returned to the UK in the late 1920s. He died in Brighton in 1942, aged 75.
Filmography
Movies and shows, newest first
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1923
Armenia, Cradle of Humanity
Movie Director
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1921
The Four Seasons
Movie Director
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1916
The Battle of the Somme
Movie Editor
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1915
Britain Prepared
Movie Director
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1915
Fight for the Dardanelles
Movie Producer
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1914
The World, the Flesh and the Devil
Movie Producer
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1912
Glasgow and the Clyde Coast
Movie Producer
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1912
The Pageant Procession
Movie Producer
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1911
Varieties of Sweet Peas
Movie Producer
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1911
The Aerial Anarchists
Movie Producer
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1911
Coronation Drill at Reedham Orphanage
Movie Producer
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1911
Feeding Poultry at Prowse Jones Farm
Movie Producer
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1911
A Run with the Exmoor Staghounds
Movie Producer
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1911
Building a British Railway: Constructing the Locomotive
Movie Producer
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1911
Banks of the Nile
Movie Producer
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1911
Trilby and Svengali
Movie Producer
More credits
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1910
The Birth of a Flower
Movie Producer
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1910
The Aerial Submarine
Movie Producer
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1910
Fording the River
Movie Producer
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1910
Lake Garda, Italy
Movie Producer
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1910
A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner
Movie Director
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1909
A Dash to the North Pole
Movie Producer
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1908
The Harvest
Movie Producer
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1908
Hackenschmidt-Rogers [The Great Wrestling Match]
Movie Producer
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1907
Torpedo Attack on H.M.S. Dreadnought
Movie Director
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1906
The Arlberg Railway
Movie Producer
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1904
Hunting the Red Deer, With the Devon and Somerset Staghounds
Movie Director
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1904
Living London
Movie Director
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1904
Venice and the Grand Canal
Movie Producer
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1903
Cheese Mites
Movie Producer
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1903
Cervino 1901
Movie Producer
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1902
The Coronation of Edward VII
Movie Producer
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1901
Ascent of the Jungfrau
Movie Self
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1900
Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race
Movie Producer
