I hope this is within the scope of the sub. I'm doing a research project about children's films but I can't find anything from the time period between the birth of cinematography and the 30's. Not in America nor in Europe.
I wonder if there is none, didn't production companies consider that children were relevant as potential public?
Thank you.
This is largely based on UK films but I suspect that similar factors might have been applicable elsewhere.
There are plenty of films from those early years where if you look at them, or surviving descriptions, you could easily say "Yes, this is a comedy which would be particularly appreciated by children". What you will probably not find so much are contemporary explicit descriptions of them as children's films. For most films of the era all we have left are the distributor and/or exhibitor's marketing materials and they usually weren't providing films for a solely children's audience.
As I am sure you know, almost all films of the period were comparatively short, so what was being sold to the public was a whole programme of films. Some programmes would have been implicitly aimed at an adult audience but most were aimed at a family audience. Few in the early days were aimed only at children. Marketing would therefore have concentrated on the "suitable for the whole family" angle, rather than specifying children.
Early British pioneer Cecil Hepworth produced a whole series of films featuring "Tilly the Tomboy" and the mischievous child causing comic chaos was a very common theme across the industry. G A Smith, James Williamson and the Clarendon Film company all produced children's films of a wide variety from comedy to "Boy's Own" adventure stories.
The first couple of volumes of Rachel Low's The History of the British Film cover this period and include mentions of numerous children's films, comic and otherwise.
Wow, what a great answer! Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this, it's really helpful.