17 January, Paris: The Bébé-Cinema (380 seats) was opened today by M. Mary whose son Clément starred in the Bébé series for Gaumont. 7 February, Rome: A movie theater reserved for the clergy has opened at the Vatican. The Pope has forbidden Catholic priests to attend public cinemas. 15 February, France: The Catholic paper La Croix du Pas-de-Calais has published an article criticizing the film Notre Dame de Paris, reminding readers that Victor Hugo's book is blacklisted. 18 February, New York: Opening of The Prisoner of Zenda. This film of Anthony Hope's popular novel has been made by Edwin S. Porter for Adolph Zukor's new Famous Players company. 1 March, Santa Monica: Vitagraph has made a permanent move from New York and is setting up it studios in California. 4 March, Brussels: Isidore Moray, the producer and cameraman who created the Journal belge d'actualité, filmed a house in rue de la Montagne being destroyed by a gas explosion. The film was on the screen five hours after shooting. 5 March, New York: Thomas H. Ince has produced The Scourge of the Desert, directed by Reginald Barker. It is the first Western in a series with William S. Hart. 17 March, Vincennes: Louis Lépine, the prefect of police in Paris, today visited Pathé's factories to watch the flammability tests of celluloid-based "safety" films. 31 March, London: At the instigation of the Minister of the Interior, the cinema profession has created the British Board of Film Censors to classify films into two classifications: "U" for suitable for all ages and "A" for adults. March, London: Release of H. G. Ponting's second film on Scott's Expedition to the South Pole. The reels were found last December next to the frozen bodies of Captain Scott and his companions, nine months after their deaths. March, Berlin: Erich Pommer, the managing director of Deutsche Eclair (Decla), a joint venture with Eclair, has bought up the majority of the capital from the mother company. 19 April, Paris: The Minister of the Interior has forbidden the screening of all films depicting recently commited crimes or capital punishment. 9 May, Paris: The whole capital is fascinated by the new posters that have just appeared on the boulevards. They portray an elegantly-dressed Fantômas, the Master of Crime, rendered popular by the detective novels of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. All around Paris his sinister, masked face can be seen. These posters are not marked with the name of the books' publishers, Arthème Fayard, but with the Gaumont symbol. The film company acquired the rights to the successful first novel for the sum of 6,000 francs, and got Louis Feuillade to direct the adventures of this dark, mysterious character. Fantômas, a drama in three episodes containing over 30 scenes, was released today, and it has already captivated the public. Contained in its 1,146 metres are murders, attempted murders, robberies, blackmail and kidnappings. The three episodes are entitled The Robbery at Palace Hotel, The Disappearance of Lord Beltham and Around the Scaffold. The 33 chapters of the book have been condensed with great skill by Feuillade himself, though Gaumont -- always the puritan -- asked the director not to bring the most terrifying scenes to the screen. Despite that, Feuillade has managed to create an eerier atmosphere than that in the book, and the adventures of the arch criminal and genius of disguise in a labyrinthine Paris are unforgettable. May, Bombay: The infant Indian film industry has produced an epic to rival those made in France or California. At four reels, Raja Harishchandra, directed by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, marks the beginning of feature film production on the subcontinent. Based on a Hindu legend surrounding the trials of righteous King Harishchandra -- a story resembling that of Job in the Old Testament -- the film contains many spectacular scenes, including a forest fire and the apparition of the God Siva. Premiered on 3 May, it is now playing at the Coronation Theatre as part of a one-and-a-half-hour variety program of dancers, jugglers and comedians. 1 June, California: D. W. Griffith has started filming his first four-reeler for Biograph, Judith of Bethulia. The film has a budget of $36,000, his highest to date. 26 June, Paris: Éclair and Pathé have published their annual reports for 1912. Both companies show a healthy profit: 943,590 francs for Éclair and 7.3 million francs for Pathé. 19 July, Paris: There has been some eventful filming in Vincennes at the SCAGL studios. Albert Capellani has adapted Jean Richepin's story La Glu (The Glue) as a vehicle for Mistinguett. The legendary music-hall star has been lured into films with a fat fee of 2,500 francs. Her money has been well earned; in one scene another actress was supposed to knock her out with a prop hammer wrapped in cotton wool. Was the blow a little too strong? Mistinguett, blood running down her face, fainted dead away in front of an astonished crew. 1 August, Cologne: Dekage (Deutsche Kinematograph Gesellschaft), which has extended its movie theater circuit interests and become a production company, is offering a fortune to actors to sign up. It has already won over the Dane Vigo Larsen and two promising French actresses, Suzanne Grandais and Yvette Andreyor. 6 August, Havana: Producer Enrique Diaz Quesada has made Cuba's first feature film, Manuel Garcia or the King of the Cuban Fields, the story of a national hero in the war of independence. 22 August, Berlin: Opening of Stellen Rye's film The Student from Prague starring Paul Wegener and adapted from Hans Heinz Ewers' book. The cameraman is Guido Seeber. 5 September, Paris: Victorin Jasset's final film Protéa has received a warm welcome from the public on it release today. The great director of the Éclair company died prematurely last 22 June. For the film, Jasset took advantage of the tense situation in the Balkans to shoot a spy film that has an atmosphere that comes very close to reality. The role of the spy, Protéa, is played by Josette Andriot, who must get hold of a secret treaty between Celtia and Slavonia. With the assistance of L'Anguille, played by Lucienne Bataille, the beautiful heroine manages to steal the document, after having been disguised as a cat burglar, as a society woman, an aide-de-camp, an ambassador of Albania, a gypsy and a wild-animal tamer. Jasset's Dr. Phantom, Zigomar and the disturbing image of Protéa in a black leotard will be long remembered by the public. 10 September, New York: The Famous Players Film Co. has released In the Bishop's Carriage by Edwin S. Porter and J. Searle Dawley. Mary Pickford who stars in the film was signed by Adolph Zukor for $2,000 per week. 15 September, Rochester, NY: Eastman-Kodak has released the first panchromatic film, with sensitivity to the whole tonal range. But it is expensive and has several faults: It lacks stability, and processing takes longer than for orthochromatic film. 1 October, New York: D. W. Griffith, who recently left Biograph, has signed a contract with Reliance-Majestic, a branch of the Mutual Film Corporation. Griffith will be taking over the artistic direction and will be able to devote himself to full-length films, directing two to three projects a year. 3 October, Berlin:The avant-garde producer and director of the Deutsches Theatre Max Reinhardt has made his first film since accepting Projecktion-AG Union's fabulous contract. The big-budget film, The Island of Happiness, was shot in Corfu with an original film script. 10 October, Prague: The Asum company has released Max Urban's The Bartered Bride, based on Smetana's opera, the first full-length Czechoslovakian film. 3 November, Stockholm: Svenska has just released Victor Sjöström's eighth film, Ingeborg Holm, which stars Hilda Bergström. Sjöström's sensitivity and talent as a filmmaker are revealed against a background of social criticism. 24 November, New York: This afternoon a hugh crowd laid siege to Weber's Theatre on Broadway in the frantic rush to see Traffic in Souls, a sensational release from the recently formed Universal Film Manufacturing Co. Ticket prices for show have been raised to an exhorbitant 25¢. This film's theme, the sinister menace to American womanhood from gangs of "white slavers," is currently the subject of what the New York World has called "popular hysteria." Lurid stage plays like The Lure have dealt with the subject, and public debate has been further inflamed by the June publication of the long-awaited Rockefeller Report on Commercialized Prostitution in New York City. The talented director of Traffic in Souls, George Loane Tucker, has drawn on this report and a similar probe launched by New York D.A., Charles S. Whitman. The result is a powerful six-reel drama in which plucky Jane Gail and her policeman-fiance Matt Moore save her sister from the clutches of a white slave trader masquerading as a moral reformer. Tucker's original proposal for the film, and request for a budget of $5,000, had been turned down by Universal chief Carl Laemmle. Undeterred, Tucker then raised the money from friends and was able to make Traffic in Souls surreptitiously, working around his regular shooting schedule. Then the director suddenly left the studio after quarreling over another matter. There was a huge battle at Universal when Laemmle discovered the existence of Traffic in Souls, but, nevertheless, the film is a hit and has been programmed in 28 movie theaters in the country's largest cities. Scene and title card from Tucker's Traffic in Souls 25 November, Paris: Gaumont has released the first film in its "Vaudeville Comedies" series, Les Millions de la bonne (The Housemaid's Millions), with the actresses Marguerite Lavigne and Madeleine Guitty. Louis Feuillade directed. 1 December, New York: Gaston Méliès has returned from his extremely costly Pacific expedition ($50,000) to find his firm on the edge of bankruptcy. The documentaries filmed in Oceania have met with little success and many of the reels were destroyed by the heat. 5 December, Paris: The Gaumont Palace movie theater is currently screening Gaumont's first Chronochrome films, one of the first trichromatic processes to be developed in France. 13 December, Paris: The Lux Company has been dissolved. Its film lab in Gentilly, that used to process 10,000 metres of film daily, is up for sale. 26 December, New York: A new Keystone comedy, Fatty Joins the Force, features bulky, baby-faced comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who has recently been signed to the studio by Mack Sennett. The 26-year-old Arbuckle is a vaudeville veteran who has tried just about everything possible during his show business career, from singing ballads in a nickelodeon to performing in a black-face act. But the breakthrough to the big-time has proved elusive. He made an early start in films in 1907 when he made some one- and two-reelers for Selig. After another stint treading the boards, Arbuckle approched Sennett for a job at Keystone. Apparently Sennett was not overly impressed with the moon-faced comic but was nevertheless shrewd enough to spot that the public might find a fat policeman funny. So Arbuckle became a Keystone Cop at the princely sum of $3 a day. Impressed with Roscoe's performance in The Gangsters, directed by Henry "Pathé" Lehrman, starring Fred Mace and released last May, Sennett has moved the Fat Man up into featured roles. Fatty's contract looks likely to finally catapult him out of obscurity and into the limelight. Moviegoers are warming to the nimble way so big a man negotiates the non-stop slapstick of Sennett's films. Arbuckle's combination of truculence and breezy good humor, which audiences find particularly appealing, mark him out as a man to watch. The Fat Man is a heavyweight addition to Sennett's stable of comedy stars, skillfully brought together on his Edendale lot. 29 December, Hollywood: With Oscar Apfel as his co-director and Al Gondolfi behind the camera, Cecil B. De Mille has begun shooting The Squaw Man in a converted barn located at Selma and Vine in Hollywood. Dustin Farnum is the star and the film is based on the well-known play by Edwin Milton Royle. It is the tale of an Indian girl who saves the life of a British aristocrat in the Old West, and bears him a child before committing suicide. Since most of the story takes place outdoors, The Squaw Man was selected as being the easiest subject to film without the use of full studio facilities. In fact, the small film company was already headed for Flagstaff, AZ, bu after one look at the built-up city, they decided to get back on the train and continue to California instead. This is the first film to be produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co., founded by Lasky, his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish, Cecil B. De Mille, and Arthur Friend earlier this year. De Mille and Lasky are both new arrivals in the film industry, having previously been involved in the theater and vaudeville respectively, but they seem to know what they are doing. Since the rights to the film have already been sold to a number of regional distributors for a substantial sum, reportedly $40,000, it is likely that the newcomers will earn themselves a profit. 29 December, New York: The Keystone Picture Corp. has signed a young British comedian, Charles Chaplin. About a year ago Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand were impressed with Chaplin's comic virtuosity when they saw him playing a gentlemanly drunk in A Night in an English Music Hall, one of the highlights of the touring Karno Company's revue showing at the American Music Hall on New York's 42nd Street. Fellow Keystone director Adam Kessel also claims to have seen the 24-year-old Chaplin and spotted his potential, and the result was an offer to join the Keystone company as a "moving picture actor" at a salary of $150 a week. The contract was signed on 25 September and Chaplin officially left the Karno troupe, with whom he has appeared for seven years, at the end of November. Early in December he arrived in Los Angeles and has been settled into a room at the Great Northern Hotel. 29 December, USA: Release of the first episode of F. J. Grandon's The Adventures of Kathlyn, a 13-part serial starring Kathlyn Williams and produced by Selig. 31 December, Peking: Asia Film Co. has released the first full-length Chinese film An Ill-Fated Couple, a satire on arranged marriages from producers Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu. In the course of this last year, Asia Film was taken over from Benjamin Polaski by the Americans, Essler and Lehrman.