IT must have been quite a moment for those gathered at York's Exhibition Hall two days before Christmas in 1896. Suddenly a light flickered in the gloom and the audience were treated to the very latest thing in entertainment - a moving picture show.

William Hamilton's "animated photographs" were not quite the first film to be shown in the city. Just days before, on December 19, the Theatre Royal provided a glimpse of the "technological marvel" of cinema between the fourth and fifth acts of the melodrama Shadows Of A Great City. But contemporary accounts suggest the Exhibition Hall show was of superior quality.

"It is a very complicated and expensive mechanism which produces these marvellous effects," recorded the Evening Press that Christmas Eve, "and will doubtless bear further development and improve in the future.

"It is a remarkable and impressive thing to see the veritable reproduction on a large sheet, as in magic lantern exhibitions, only more continuous - the views occupying a minute or two, each showing several aspects of each incident as it passes before the audience."

To commemorate that great moment, a new film will be shown on Friday at what the Exhibition Hall became, the York Art Gallery. Although we are now bombarded by moving images, the audience for A Century Of Yorkshire Film should enjoy a similar frisson of excitement as that felt by their 1896 predecessors. Much of the footage has rarely, if ever, been seen in public before.

The film show is the idea of the York Museums Trust, and is being put together by Sue Howard, director of the Yorkshire Film Archive. Four weeks ago, the archive, formerly based at Ripon, moved into purpose-designed headquarters within the swish new York St John's College building, opposite the Union Terrace car park.

Soon, the 4,000 films in the archive's collection will be moved from storage into special vaults, humidity-controlled and cooled to a constant 10C to preserve the precious footage.

Sue has compiled a stunning variety of material for Friday's show, including movies made by Yorkshire's film making pioneers from the turn of the century, travelogues from the 1920s, newsreels and some lovely examples of home movie making. Viewers will see how York has changed since William Hamilton's day.

Some of the excerpts are particularly relevant. "We have a little film called York, Ascot of the North, from 1921," says Sue. "It's beautiful because everybody's really dressed up for the day at York Racecourse. It's only about a minute and a half long, but it's pertinent now."

She also wants to find out a bit more about the National Kitchen opened in York in 1914. The film of it is clear, but the location is not.

"Another film we are going to show is about the extensions being built to York station. That's amazing. It shows guys holding mortar boards with bricks on their heads running down planks."

It could never happen now. And health and safety issues are raised in two other films. One, by the Asbestos Board, offers instructions on the "safe" disposal of the killer fibre, which will make the modern viewer wince. Another shows children from Joseph Rowntree School learning to drive a tractor. It kangaroos down the road.

A documentary from a church group highlighting poverty in York demonstrates how campaigners quickly latched on to cinema as a highly persuasive medium.

"We want to try and tell the story of film and the city, and at the same time occasionally step outside York and look at the surroundings," says Sue.

Yorkshire has a claim to be the birthplace of cinema. The earliest surviving film footage was shot in October 1888 in Leeds by Frenchman Louis Le Prince. He mysteriously disappeared during a train journey two years later, before he patented his invention.

At first, movies were thought to be just another fairground attraction, with a limited lifespan. But they soon caught the public imagination, in Yorkshire more than most places.

"Even in the very early days of film, Yorkshire was one of the centres of film production. We'll be showing an example taken by the Sheffield Photographic Company.

"There were precursors to documentaries, called 'topical budgets', such as when Queen Victoria visited Sheffield in 1897."

Originally, the 35mm films were shown in places such as York's Exhibition Hall. Then cinemas began to be built in the 1900s.

It wasn't until 1923, with the invention of the less expensive 16mm film, that the amateur filmmaker was born. And the even cheaper 8mm format of the 1930s gave still more people the chance to direct their own movies.

This development allowed a very different, much wider world, to be captured on film. Professional producers came along, took the footage they had been asked to provide, and went away again, says Sue. "If you were an amateur filmmaker you had utter freedom to film what you wanted to film.

"It might be children on the beach, or your family sitting down to a meal."

This is the great value of film as a social historical document, says Martin Watts, director of lifelong learning at the York Museum Trust.

"It's because someone took the trouble to do it that makes it so fascinating. Imagine if Pepys had a camera."

Even seeing ordinary room settings on film is valuable. "What's available to the researcher are back prints of Ideal Home magazine. Whose house looks like the Ideal Home magazine, even now?

"But if you have film of someone taking tea, that is how that room looked."

The York Museum Trust and the Yorkshire Film Archive are planning two more York film shows after Friday, one at Christmas and the other next spring.

The archive is also able to offer filmshows to local groups across the region at a subsidised fee.

The official launch of the archive is due around the end of November. By then, a public access room to view the films will be up and running and the catalogue will be online.

Elsewhere in the impressive suite of rooms are places to edit and repair films.

Archivists are also working with Yorkshire TV on a series called The Way We Were. Other work will see old film transferred into digital formats.

The future of Yorkshire's old movies has never looked so secure.

Tickets for A Century of Yorkshire Film are on sale at York Art Gallery, York Castle Museum, and Yorkshire Museum at £8, which includes refreshments. For more information ring 01904 687687

Updated: 10:47 Monday, September 22, 2003