Well dressed men walk at a race course, looking almost like they are marching to "Stout Hearted Men". There is a cut and then people mill about, around Emile Loubet, President of France.
Newsreels -- collections of these short films to illustrate current events -- would not begin to appear regularly until late in the first decade of the 20th century. In the meantime, actualities included shots of famous people at random events. Were these news pieces? Gossip? More than a hundred years later, we're still arguing the distinction and I expect we always will. Still, these early shorts bring an immediacy to people long dead.