From Texas to Minnesota Frank and Indiana Brinton shared their collection of films over a century ago, now some of the world’s oldest films in existence are shown annually at the Ainsworth Film Festival. This past weekend marked the 23rd year of the festival and there were attendees from Texas to Minnesota, as well as Florida, and one person from England.

Kelly Kitchens, a film publicist, and Mark Wickersham drove to Ainsworth from Dallas, Texas. The pair first heard of the festival through Saving Brinton which features Michael Zahs and the Brinton film collection, “One of my festivals, Dallas VideoFest DocuFest had the documentary Saving Brinton in the festival. And we fell in love with the film, with Mike, with everything that had to do with it. The top was Mike, I mean the way that he explained things and told the story about the, I mean it’s almost like he’s the Brinton’s long lost child, because he knows so much about them and their stories. And we decided that we wanted to come up here and experience it for ourselves having Mike do it.”

Those gathered gave a freewill donation, enjoyed ice cream from the Dairy Mart, and then gathered to watch films from two centuries ago with narration from Zahs. A highlight of this year’s festival is what Zahs said is the world’s oldest motion picture, “I thought the oldest film was about 1894, the film I’m going to show now is 1874 and it is a view of Venus crossing the sun. This happens every 117 years, then it happens again in 17 years, and then another 117 years. We had a man here last night who’s seen it twice, and now he says he’s seen it three times. This is the oldest in the world.” He said it was done in Japan. For a matter of seconds the crowd fell silent as Venus moved between the sun and the camera that captured it on film for the first time.

The festival’s theme was Love and War, which included films depicting war, quarrels of love, and weddings. Zahs narrated and often had the crowd chuckling. Each year the festival is held at the Ainsworth Opera House the last Friday and Saturday of July.