Boulder's first films were shown at Chautauqua, by Silvia Pettem
In 1898, when the Chautauqua cultural and educational movement opened in Boulder, its summer visitors were treated to speakers, entertainers, and musicians in its newly built auditorium. Boulder residents attended, as well. The Chautauqua Association also brought in motion pictures –– the first ever shown in Boulder.
At the time, the public was caught up in the fervor of the Spanish-American War, creating a demand for patriotic newsreels. The first shown at Chautauqua was the Battle of Santiago Bay, leading viewers to believe it was filmed in Cuba. The film, however, featured cardboard models of ships that were partially disguised with cigar smoke.
During the next few years, the Chautauqua Association entertained its audiences with a mixture of travelogues, science fiction, and fairy tales, including Cinderella. The 6-minute film, produced by French director Georges Méliès, featured transformations with lizards that turned into footmen, and rats with long whiskers who became coachmen. According to the Daily Camera, the concluding scenes "sent the audience home in a daze."
Perhaps the most startling film for early viewers was another of Méliès' productions, A Trip to the Moon, shown at Chautauqua in 1902. The director built his 13-minute narrative on author Jules Verne's books and centered the plot on an expedition of astronomers who climbedinto a space capsule shaped like a bullet. Young women in very skimpy (for the era) sailor outfitsthen pushed the capsule into a cannon and shot it off into space.
The "man in the moon" (the moon with a face) watched the capsule's arrival, until it hit him in the eye. Once on the moon, the astronomers got out of the capsule, unrolled their blankets, and went to sleep. They woke up surrounded by moon creatures with insect-like features. The astronomers fought them off and managed to capture one of them. Then they tipped the capsule off a cliff to return to Earth. Once they landed, they were rescued by a ship at sea and returned to cheering crowds that included the same young sailor-suited ladies.
By 1909, audiences were entranced with travelogues that showed the Swiss Alps from a balloon, as well as the demolition of buildings partially destroyed in Italy by an earthquake. Boulder audiences were told they could wander the world –– and even the moon.