Found Footage Offers a New Glimpse at 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

On Saturday night, a small crowd filled a 120-seat theater in Fremont, Calif., to watch a movie unlike any other on the big screen, one that offers a fresh look at a tragic chapter in American history.

The nine-minute silent film, much of it previously thought to be lost, shows the ruins left by the earthquake that ravaged San Francisco 112 years ago, according to David Kiehn, a film historian who helped to identify and restore the footage, which he said was originally shot by the pioneering Miles Brothers film studio in San Francisco.

The rediscovered work is a fitting follow-up to the famous Miles Brothers production “A trip down Market Street before the fire,” which shows the bustling city just days before the earthquake, its inhabitants unaware of the disaster to come on April 18, 1906.