Recently attended a talk about the pioneer of early non-fiction film, Charles Urban, who was also one of the creators of an early colour film process, Kinemacolor . By 1912 his company occupied this entire building in Wardour St, Soho and you can still see the name ‘URBANORA’ carved into the stone headpiece atop the building. His company specialised in the non-fiction film, effectively travelogues or an early form of documentary to be shown to an audience a generation or two before the days of modern travel, but as this was still the silent days still watched with only a musical accompaniment . The proud logo of his company was ‘Urbanora:We Put The World Before You’. That the ground floor of this building is now occupied by an amusement arcade called ‘Las Vegas’, one of the most ‘mediated’ cities in the world and a city in which many other parts of the world are ‘brought’ to you in mediated replica is another of those odd, unplanned historical/architectural ironies.
markbrisenden 