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The Little Match Seller is a 1902 British short silent drama film, directed by James Williamson, retelling the classic 1845 Hans Christian Andersen fable of the sad life and tragic death of a little match seller. This major fiction film of the period was, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "a serious attempt at depicting a person's inner emotional life on film through purely visual means, using trick effects not to provoke laughter but for serious dramatic reasons." It is one of the oldest surviving silent films.