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Je n'aime pas dans les vieux films américains quand les conducteurs ne regardent pas la route. Et de ratage en ratage, on s'habitue à ne jamais dépasser le stade du brouillon. La vie n'est que l'interminable répétition d'une représentation qui n'aura jamais lieu.

Sioux Ghost Dance (1896) - William K.L. Dickson, William Heise

When Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show passed through the area of the Edison film studio, the opportunity was too good to miss and Edison’s studio filmed a lot of acts from the show, like this one, which features Native Americans in traditional dress performing a traditional dance.  The quality of this one is spectacularly poor, as bad as any of these films since the very first Monkeyshines, a whole four years prior to this.  I’m assuming it’s a preservation issue, but you can hardly even tell what’s going on with this one.  One side note: the Ghost Dance was a dance essentially intended to kill all white people, so maybe the dancers are at least having fun.  0 stars.

tl;dr – Native Americans perform a traditional dance or so they tell me; the film quality here is as bad as anything since the very first Monkeyshines and you can’t really tell what’s happening.  0 stars. 

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