1905 in film

Events

• The Manaki brothers make the first motion picture in the Balkans, The Weavers.
• Pathé Frères colors black-and-white films by machine.
• Filmmaking takes an unexpected historical role by recording activities along Market Street, in the year preceding the destruction from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
• Aleksandr Khanzhonkov begins filming his first documentaries.
• The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach, the oldest surviving Dutch fictional film is released by Alberts Frères. Later to be included in the canon of Dutch cinema as released by the Netherlands Film Festival.
• June 19 – John P. Harris and his brother Harry in Pittsburgh open the first theater in the U.S. devoted exclusively to the exhibition of motion pictures.
• December 16 – Variety, an entertainment trade newspaper that would later cover the film industry, is published for the first time in New York City.

  Films released in 1905

Alice Guy-Blaché

• À la cabane bambou
• Allumeur-Marche
• Au poulailler!
• C'est une ingénue
• Cake-walk nègre
• Chez le dentiste
• Chien jouant à la balle
• Clown, chien et ballon
• Comment on dort à Paris!
• Cucurbitacée
• Douaniers et contrebandiers
• Esmeralda directed with Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset
• Espagne
• Être légume
• Five O'Clock Tea
• Jeune homme et le trottin
• L'enfant du cordonnier
• La charité du prestidigitateur
• La fifille à sa mère
• La malagueña et le torero
• La mattchiche
• La paimpolaise
• La polka des trottins
• La statue
• Le bébé embarrassant
• Le boléro cosmopolite
• Le Cake-walk du Nouveau Cirque
• Le coq dressé de Cook et Rilly
• Le képi
• Le lorgnon accusateur
• Le pantalon coupé
• Le pavé
• Le petit Grégoire
• Le petit panier
• Le plateau
• Le rire du nègre
• Les maçons
• Les p'tits pois
• Le tango
• Le trou de mon quai
• Le vrai jiu-jitsu
• Lilas blanc
• On est poivrot, mais on a du coeur
• Peintre et ivrogne
• Polin, l'anatomie du conscrit
• Robert Macaire et Bertrand
• Roméo pris au piège
• Si ça t'va
• Une noce au lac Saint-Fargeau
• V'la le rétameur
• Valsons
• Viens, poupoule
• Villa dévalisée
• La valise enchantée

  Cecil Hepworth

• Baby's Toilet
• The Other Side Of The Hedge directed by Lewin Fitzhamon
• Rescued by Rover, starring Cecil Hepworth, Margaret Hepworth, Barbara Hepworth, and Blair ; co-directed by Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth

  Georges Méliès

• An Adventurous Automobile Trip
• The Black Imp
• The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship
• The Living Playing Cards
• The Palace of the Arabian Nights
• Rip's Dream
• Ulysses and the Giant Polyphemus

  Edwin S. Porter

• The Boarding School Girls
• The Kleptomaniac
• The Little Train Robbery a parodic sequel to the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery with an all-child cast, released on September 1, 1905. Both were directed by Edwin S. Porter.
• The Miller's Daughter is a 1905 American silent film produced by Edison Manufacturing Company. Edison employees Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter are generally credited as directors. The film is based on the melodrama Hazel Kirke by Steele MacKaye.
• The Night Before Christmas starring Harry Eytinge
• The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog

  G. W. Bitzer

• A Trip to Salt Lake City directed by G. W. Bitzer, the first known narrative film treatment of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• In the Swimming Pool, Palm Beach, Florida a silent short actuality/documentary film

  James Williamson

• An Interesting Story
• Our New Errand Boy a British short silent comedy film, directed by James Williamson

  Mitchell and Kenyon

• Halifax Catholic Procession
• Special March Past of St. Joseph's Scholars and Special Parade of St. Matthew's Pupils, Blackburn

  Others

• 2 A. M. in the Subway a one shot, 53 second-long comedy filmed, and probably directed, by Billy Bitzer
• Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom, directed by J. Stuart Blackton
• Airy Fairy Lillian Tries On Her New Corsets, produced by Frank Marion and Wallace McCutcheon
• Automobile Races at Ormond, Fla., directed by Unknown person
• The Bobby's Nightmare, directed by Alf Collins
• The Conscience, made in France.
• Dingjun Mountain, Chinese silent film directed by Ren Qingtai
• The D.T.'s, or The Effect of Drink, directed by William Haggar
• The Fairy of the Black Rocks
• The Freak Barber, directed by J. H. Martin
• Los héroes del sitio de Zaragoza is a 1903 or 1905 Spanish short black-and-white silent film directed by Segundo de Chomón.
• The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach is an early Dutch silent film directed by Willy Mullens, and produced by Alberts Frères. A six-minute short comedy film, it is one of the oldest surviving Dutch fictional films. When the Netherlands Film Festival presented its canon of Dutch cinema in 2007, it included this film.
• The Nihilist is an American short silent film directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Sr..
• La Presa di Roma, directed by Filoteo Alberini; possibly the first Italian short film
• La Revolution en Russie, directed by Ferdinand Zecca
• The Thirteen Club, produced by American Mutoscope
• Trip to the Center of the Moon, starring Mario Caserini
• The Unfortunate Policeman a British short silent comedy film produced by Robert W. Paul
• The Weavers'', directed by the Manaki brothers; most likely the first film shot in the Balkans

  Births

• January 3 – Anna May Wong, American actress
• January 12 – Tex Ritter, American actor, singer
• January 13 – Kay Francis, American actress
• January 17 – Grant Withers, American actor
• January 26 – Charles Lane, American actor
• February 27 – Franchot Tone, American actor
• March 18 – Robert Donat, English actor
• March 23 – Joan Crawford, American actress
• April 8 – Ilka Chase, American actress,
• April 17 – Arthur Lake, American actor
• May 1 – Leila Hyams, American actress
• May 15 – Joseph Cotten, American actor
• May 16 – Henry Fonda, American actor
• June 19 – Mildred Natwick, American actress
• July 29 – Clara Bow, American actress
• August 2 – Myrna Loy, American actress
• August 3 – Dolores del Río, Mexican actress
• September 5 – Meta Luts, Estonian actress
• September 18 – Greta Garbo, Swedish actress
• September 21 – Marguerite Roberts, American writer
• October 4 – Leslie Mitchell, British newsreel commentator
• October 10 – Aksella Luts, Estonian screenwriter and actress
• November 5 – Joel McCrea, American actor
• December 5 – Otto Preminger, Austro-Hungarian-American director
• December 11 – Gilbert Roland, Mexican-American actor
• December 24 – Howard Hughes, American director, producer, editor

  Deaths

• March 24 – Jules Verne, famous novelist of fantasy stories and science-fiction,
• March 25 – Maurice Barrymore, Barrymore family patriarch
• April 23 – Joseph Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle
• October 13 – Henry Irving, English Shakespearean actor and stage manager, who at one time was Bram Stoker's employer,

  Debuts

• Arthur Johnson – The White Caps
• Max Linder – First Night Out
• Paul Panzer – Stolen by Gypsies