Films

In October 1888, the world's very first moving images were captured in Leeds. Roundhay Garden Scene and a Leeds Bridge street scene were shot using a single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film by pioneering inventor Louis Le Prince. Lasting only a few seconds, with no sound or colour, it marked Leeds as the birthplace of film.

Since then many technological advances have been made - the major ones being the introduction of colour and sound, but 120 years after those momentous frames shot in Leeds, a young filmmaker from the city is preparing to take his latest short, a silent black and white film to this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Captured on-location in Leeds, 'A Change Of Mime' - written and directed by Simon Glass - is the story of a mime artist drowning in creative competition. Lost, he decides to take a more reliable job in the city, one that undermines his silent art - forcing him to speak!

Simon Glass filming

We asked Simon about the film, his career and why he felt able to market a silent film in the 21st Century: "I studied cinema and photography at university, but my obsession goes back to childhood, playing with action figures and working out scenarios for them to act out - I suppose I'm a natural-born director!"

"After college, I started working for production company, Human Film (based in Leeds), but I wanted to produce films of my own, so I came up up with my first film 'Yakov, My Boy' in 2006. It had some success at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and at Cannes, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that a French distribution company, thought it was worthy of a DVD release."

"The French attitude to cinema is very different, they had no qualms about taking on a film by a novice like me. That success led to producer Vivienne Errington-Barnes getting French production company, Elytel, to fund 'A Change Of Mime', which will also appear on DVD. It was shot using an old Super 8 camera. Despite the limitations of Super 8 (no sound) it has a grainy resonance that is very atmospheric."

"Initially the use of Super 8 was just a homage to a historical aspect of film-making, but it's proved to be a wise decision as it gives my work a different feel to some of the digitally-processed films doing the rounds. People may be surprised at my decision to produce a silent film, but I'm a firm believer in Hitchcock's axiom that the best stories can be told without words by a director with the right skills."

"I see these films as part of my apprenticeship, I'd love to make features eventually but I reckon I need to hone my craft making a few more short films first. Plus, this is an expensive business, and financial support has to be in place to make any film these days."