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Manka Bros. Film Library
The World's Largest Film Library
1910s
1920s
1930s
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2025 Film Slate
1907 - 1919
Buying A Loaf Of Bread - (Silent Short - 1907)
Buying A Loaf Of Bread
- The Manka Bros.' first film! Studio founder Khan Manka buys a loaf of bread. He sure didn't like the price!
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Simeon Mankewitz Cries Like A Baby - (Silent Short - 1908)
Simeon Mankewitz Cries Like A Baby
- Crowd pleasing series of shorts in which the unstable middle Manka brother cries on a New York stoop.
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Kittens Play With Balls Of Twine - (Silent Short - 1909)
Kittens Playing With Balls Of Twine
- Filmed by Simeon Manka while recovering after a suicide attempt in the Ray Brook Sanatorium in New York State - becomes the top box office hit of 1909 and saves Manka Bros. from bankruptcy.
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Khan Manka Beating His Brother Simeon With A Juggling Club - (Silent Short - 1910)
Khan Manka Beating His Brother Simeon With A Juggling Club
- This silent short was a sensation and became the top grossing film in cinema history until ‘Birth Of A Nation’ in 1915.
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Cattle Drive - (Silent Short - 1912)
Cattle Drive (Silent Short - 1912)
- One in a series of very popular single-reel comedies starring 'The Clownboys' (formerly the 'Karnobat Klowns') - a Bulgarian comedy troupe]. [This was a dangerous film shoot, using real stampeding bulls and no stunt doubles. However, only one of 'The Clownboys' died. The others were injured but recovered to make hundreds of other shorts.]
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The Regatta - (Silent Short - 1913)
The Regatta (Silent Short - 1913)
- Starring The Fireboys (formerly the Yambol Yucksters, a comedy troupe from Bulgaria). The Fireboys must put out a fire at the Annual President's Regatta in Newport, Rhode Island. [The movie was actually shot at Pyramid Lake, north of Los Angeles, and the cerw set fire to a boat with people on it to make it look more real.]
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Graduation Glory - (Silent Short - 1914)
Graduation Glory (Silent Short - 1914)
- The Fireboys must put out a fire at an elite prep school graduation ceremony. [Most of the footage was shot from an actual fire during a Graduation Ceremony at a local southern California high school. Ironically, the only surviving film prints suffered major damage in a storage facility fire and only a few stills from the production survived.]
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Sing! - (Full-Length Silent Film - 1915)
Sing!
- Manka Bros. first full-length silent film - opened December 14, 1915, at the Manka Kinoplatz in New York. Audiences were divided over whether they wanted to be able to hear the singer sing or not.
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The Fishing Trip - (Silent Short - 1916)
The Fishing Trip (Silent Short - 1916)
- Single-reel comedy starring The Clownboys about a fishing trip gone horribly, horribly wrong.
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Football Follies - (Silent Short - 1917)
Football Follies (Silent Short - 1917)
- Moments before the big Harvard-Yale football game, the entire Harvard team comes down with a bad case of food poisoning. The Clownboys are quickly recruited to take the place of Harvard in the game of the year.
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Stock Market Serenade - (Silent Short - 1917)
Stock Market Serenade (Silent Short - 1917)
- The Clownboys (featuring Jolly Chester) AND The Fireboys team up and manage to destroy the stock market in a single day.
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The Immigrant - (Silent - 1918)
The Immigrant (Silent - 1918)
- Two-reel heart-wrenching drama starring Jolly Chester as a penniless circus clown from Bulgaria who comes to America.
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The Great War - (Silent - 1919)
The Great War (Silent - 1919)
- Two-reel war drama starring Jolly Chester and The Clownboys (featuring a final brief appearance by The Fireboys before their tragic accident.)
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