Buffalo Dance

1894
5.4| 0h1m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 23 September 1894 Released
Producted By: Edison Studios
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Long before Hollywood started painting white men red and dressing them as 'Injuns' Edison's company was using the genuine article! Featuring for what is believed to be the Native Americans first appearance before a motion picture camera 'Buffalo Dance' features genuine members of the Sioux Tribe dressed in full war paint and costume! The dancers are believed to be veteran members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Filmed again at the Black Maria studios by both Dickson and Heise the 'Buffalo Dance' warriors were named as Hair Coat, Parts His Hair and Last Horse. Its quite strange seeing these movies at first they all stand around waiting to begin and as they start some of the dancers look at the camera in an almost sad way at having lost their way of life.

Genre

Documentary

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Cast

Director

William K.L. Dickson, William Heise

Production Companies

Edison Studios

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Buffalo Dance Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Wordiezett So much average
NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
He_who_lurks Now the Edison studios were really talking. Having become comfortable with their Kinetoscope, they decided to get interesting. While stuff like "Newark Athlete" is still relatively interesting because of the skill provided, "Buffalo Dance" is not only interesting, it is also very historic. Here, Edison filmed 3 REAL....LIVE....INDIANS doing a buffalo dance. Reportedly, these Indians were called Hair Coat, Parts His Hair, and Last Horse. With it's companion "Sioux Ghost Dance" we get a bit of history in just 16 secs. If you're a historian or film buff interested in the earliest days of cinema, "Buffalo Dance" will prove a pretty interesting watch.
kobe1413 Partners W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise filmed this seventeen-second short for Edison Laboratories. They filmed three Native-American dancers recreating what the title call "the Buffalo Dance".Not much to recommend here as a film, other than its dubious value as a cultural artifact. These Native-Americans are obviously performers, so it is hard to determine the authenticity of their wardrobe and movements. This film may be more of how the white filmmakers Heise and Dickson viewed Native-Americans. I do like how one of the dancers never takes his eyes off of the camera, staring it down as he dances.I rate it a 2 out of 10.
cricket crockett I have been to many pow wows in real life, but I have never seen a Native American dancer with a giant set of black tail feathers sticking up from his butt a mile high like the chunky dancer in this short Edison film. The other two dancers have more recognizable feather gear, in the form of about two head feathers each. The dancer in the forefront most often takes a lower, almost snakish approach to his performance, which put me in mind of some of the old Warners Brothers cartoons portraying Native Americans as savages who could slither like eels to sneak up on the white folk that we used to watch in the trailer growing up when the babysitter was over. Ten generations of kids have been exposed to those cartoons, which you still can buy sets of in the dollar stores for a buck, so it stands to reason that the original animators of these films may have been drawn from the preceding five generations of kids who were exposed to these Edison Kinetographs growing up. I guess therez a saying that what goes around comes around.P.S.--Drummers never get any respect. I know from my pow wow experience that Native Americans do not dance without drumming, but from the information on this site you would have no idea that there are 2 NI drummers behind the 3 dancers in this flick!
José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) In the year of 1972, former soldier and frontiersman "Buffalo" Bill Cody decided to enter show business by creating a traveling company dedicated to perform little plays based on his very own adventures while living in the wild west. 11 years later, in 1883, what started as a little company would become the "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" show, an enormous spectacle conceived as a Western-themed circus where Buffalo Bill and company would perform many stunts or shows and bring the experience of the Wild West to the East. Soon Buffalo Bill's show became the most popular attraction of the 19th Century and so, in 1894, members of his show were invited to Thomas Alva Edison's "Black Maria" in order to participate in the making of Kinetoscope films about the show. The legendary "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" show was now part of cinema history."Buffalo Dance" is one of several movies done by members of Buffalo Bill's show in those days. What makes this one stand out is that its one of the two (along "Sioux Ghost Dance") done about the Native Americans of the show, as the shooting of the two films (on September 24, 1894) represents the first time Native Americans appeared on film. As the title implies, this movie shows three Sioux Indians performing the "Buffalo Dance", while two others appear in the background playing the music with their drums. The Buffalo dance seems to be more ancient than the ritual Ghost Dance, and this movie captures it in a very good and detailed way, making it an invaluable source about Native Americans in that period (it also helps that the footage has survived in pretty good condition). As it has been pointed out many times by critics and historians, it's pretty interesting how the dancers instinctively stare at the camera, truly surprised by it and probably wondering about the point of performing the dance in front of a device like that (film camera's wouldn't become common until 1895). Unlike "Sioux Ghost Dance", this movie captures the dance in a better way than the other movie, in part because the number of dancers is considerably minor, but also because director William K.L. Dickson (inventor of the Kinetoscope) makes a better use of his camera to capture the event. According to the noted on Edison's catalog, the dancers were known as Hair Coat, Parts His Hair and Last Horse; those were the names of the very first Sioux in the history of cinema. 6/10