1906 quake film found

More than a century after San Francisco’s deadly 1906 earthquake, a film reel with nine minutes of footage capturing the city two weeks after the devastation surfaced at a flea market and it will soon be shown to the public, according to a newspaper report. The long-lost find portrays some of the city’s postquake decimation, including City Hall with its dome nearly destroyed, the San Francisco Chronicle said. Much of the city was flattened and thousands were killed in the so-called ‘‘great quake’’ and ensuing fire on April 18, 1906. The nitrate film reel discovered at San Francisco’s Alemany Flea Market was shot by early film-makers the Miles Brothers. The footage is a bookend to their most famous work A Trip Down Market Street, a 13-minute silent film shot from a cable car days before the earthquake, said film historian David Kiehn. The new footage captures a similar journey down the city’s main thoroughfare, but shows many of the buildings collapsed to the ground.