The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema

My grandparents, Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser, founded a groundbreaking independent silent movie studio in 1909. It made over 1,000 films that were distributed around the world until it suddenly disappeared in 1917, and almost all the films were lost or destroyed. As a result, the Thanhouser studio is largely forgotten today.

I've spent more than two decades recovering what I can find of the studio's output, including original nitrate films, posters and historical artifacts. To date I've found over 225 Thanhouser films, and I continue to find more every year, buried in archives and private collections around the world.

The documentary tells the story of the studio's rise and fall in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows one family's move from live theater to one of the most successful independent studios of early cinema, against a backdrop of Thomas A. Edison and his Motion Picture Patents Trust dominating the industry. The story plays out in New York, Florida and California: fame and fortune, twisted by the vagaries of fate, ending on a bittersweet note.

Thank you to everyone who supported the fundraising campaign that helped finish this film.