Charles Musser
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520292727
- eISBN:
- 9780520966123
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520292727.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The first section characterizes the structure of feeling of US presidential elections during the long 1890s, making comparisons between that decade and the contemporary moment, noting similarities ...
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The first section characterizes the structure of feeling of US presidential elections during the long 1890s, making comparisons between that decade and the contemporary moment, noting similarities between the campaigns of William McKinley and Barack Obama. It briefly considers new media moments such as radio and television as well as recurrent structures of politicking in the twentieth century. The second section considers the shift from Film Studies to Film and Media Studies and the dialogic relations between the study of early cinema and the emerging field of media archaeology. Finally considers ways in which the illustrated lecture can be analyzed within the framework of Documentary Studies.Less
The first section characterizes the structure of feeling of US presidential elections during the long 1890s, making comparisons between that decade and the contemporary moment, noting similarities between the campaigns of William McKinley and Barack Obama. It briefly considers new media moments such as radio and television as well as recurrent structures of politicking in the twentieth century. The second section considers the shift from Film Studies to Film and Media Studies and the dialogic relations between the study of early cinema and the emerging field of media archaeology. Finally considers ways in which the illustrated lecture can be analyzed within the framework of Documentary Studies.
Erin Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195367232
- eISBN:
- 9780199894178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367232.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, ...
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Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, connecting this to the choreographic project of Pina Bausch. In the early years of cinema in Hollywood, many actors were originally dancers or were sent to study with the early modern dance duet Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles. The focus on physical performance in the silent film era brought dance and acting into an intimate relationship and produced a gestural mediality—a term drawn from Giorgio Agamben's theory of gestural cinema—that can be traced through to contemporary dancefilm.Less
Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, connecting this to the choreographic project of Pina Bausch. In the early years of cinema in Hollywood, many actors were originally dancers or were sent to study with the early modern dance duet Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles. The focus on physical performance in the silent film era brought dance and acting into an intimate relationship and produced a gestural mediality—a term drawn from Giorgio Agamben's theory of gestural cinema—that can be traced through to contemporary dancefilm.
Maite Conde
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520290983
- eISBN:
- 9780520964884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520290983.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity ...
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The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity have by and large focused on the medium’s links to changes and transformations wrought by the advent of industrialization. Noting that such transformations were not present in Brazil, the introduction outlines how early film in Brazil—that is, its arrival and dissemination—were linked instead to a political project impelled by the first Republican regime, one that sought to transform the country into modern nation-state of order and progress. The chapter maps ways in which this imbrication between film and this project laid the foundations for the birth Brazilian cinema and modernity in Brazil. In doing so, it provides an alternative modernity of early cinema.Less
The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity have by and large focused on the medium’s links to changes and transformations wrought by the advent of industrialization. Noting that such transformations were not present in Brazil, the introduction outlines how early film in Brazil—that is, its arrival and dissemination—were linked instead to a political project impelled by the first Republican regime, one that sought to transform the country into modern nation-state of order and progress. The chapter maps ways in which this imbrication between film and this project laid the foundations for the birth Brazilian cinema and modernity in Brazil. In doing so, it provides an alternative modernity of early cinema.
Scott Curtis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231134033
- eISBN:
- 9780231508636
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231134033.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Scott Curtis draws our eye to the role of scientific, medical, educational, and aesthetic observation in shaping modern spectatorship. Focusing on the nontheatrical use of motion picture technology ...
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Scott Curtis draws our eye to the role of scientific, medical, educational, and aesthetic observation in shaping modern spectatorship. Focusing on the nontheatrical use of motion picture technology in Germany between the 1890s and World War I, he follows researchers, teachers, and intellectuals as they negotiated the fascinating, at times fraught relationship between technology, discipline, and expert vision. As these specialists struggled to come to terms with motion pictures, they advanced new ideas of mass spectatorship that continue to affect the way we make and experience film. Staging a brilliant collision between the moving image and scientific or medical observation, visual instruction, and aesthetic contemplation, The Shape of Spectatorship showcases early cinema’s revolutionary impact on society and culture and the challenges the new medium placed on ways of seeing and learning.Less
Scott Curtis draws our eye to the role of scientific, medical, educational, and aesthetic observation in shaping modern spectatorship. Focusing on the nontheatrical use of motion picture technology in Germany between the 1890s and World War I, he follows researchers, teachers, and intellectuals as they negotiated the fascinating, at times fraught relationship between technology, discipline, and expert vision. As these specialists struggled to come to terms with motion pictures, they advanced new ideas of mass spectatorship that continue to affect the way we make and experience film. Staging a brilliant collision between the moving image and scientific or medical observation, visual instruction, and aesthetic contemplation, The Shape of Spectatorship showcases early cinema’s revolutionary impact on society and culture and the challenges the new medium placed on ways of seeing and learning.
Ray Zone
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813124612
- eISBN:
- 9780813134796
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813124612.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838. It occurred more ...
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Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838. It occurred more than 100 years before the 3-D boom in Hollywood, which was created by the release of Arch Oboler's African adventure film, “Bwana Devil”. This book not only discusses technological innovation and its cultural context, but also examines the aesthetic aspects of stereoscopic cinema in its first century of production. It also writes a new chapter in the history of early cinema.Less
Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838. It occurred more than 100 years before the 3-D boom in Hollywood, which was created by the release of Arch Oboler's African adventure film, “Bwana Devil”. This book not only discusses technological innovation and its cultural context, but also examines the aesthetic aspects of stereoscopic cinema in its first century of production. It also writes a new chapter in the history of early cinema.
Erin Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195367232
- eISBN:
- 9780199894178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367232.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Dance writers have frequently acknowledged the revolution that the close‐up has enacted upon the profilmic in dancefilm and video, offering new perspectives on the dancing body. The proximity to the ...
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Dance writers have frequently acknowledged the revolution that the close‐up has enacted upon the profilmic in dancefilm and video, offering new perspectives on the dancing body. The proximity to the performing body that transformed the dramatic language of early cinema quite literally “witnessed” a similar transformation of the dancing body; a more intimate movement vocabulary found its medium and shifted from subtext in a live performance to text in a particular type of dancefilm. This mode of screen performance thereby also created a new type of film bearing little relation to action-based dancefilms such as musicals and ballet recordings, which tend to document virtuosic feats in long‐shot. The work of Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs and the film theory of Gilles Deleuze provides a framework for considering the corporeal micro‐choreographies found in such films, offering an alternative model of the cinematic close‐up traditionally theorized in relation to the face. My concept of micro‐choreographies describes both the cinematic movement order produced in dancefilms where bodily sites are shot in close‐up, as well as dancefilm effects that mimic this type of cine‐choreography.Less
Dance writers have frequently acknowledged the revolution that the close‐up has enacted upon the profilmic in dancefilm and video, offering new perspectives on the dancing body. The proximity to the performing body that transformed the dramatic language of early cinema quite literally “witnessed” a similar transformation of the dancing body; a more intimate movement vocabulary found its medium and shifted from subtext in a live performance to text in a particular type of dancefilm. This mode of screen performance thereby also created a new type of film bearing little relation to action-based dancefilms such as musicals and ballet recordings, which tend to document virtuosic feats in long‐shot. The work of Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs and the film theory of Gilles Deleuze provides a framework for considering the corporeal micro‐choreographies found in such films, offering an alternative model of the cinematic close‐up traditionally theorized in relation to the face. My concept of micro‐choreographies describes both the cinematic movement order produced in dancefilms where bodily sites are shot in close‐up, as well as dancefilm effects that mimic this type of cine‐choreography.
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748626038
- eISBN:
- 9780748670895
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748626038.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The film sequel has been much maligned in popular culture as a vampirish corporative exercise in profit-making and narrative regurgitation. Drawing upon a wide range of filmic examples from early ...
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The film sequel has been much maligned in popular culture as a vampirish corporative exercise in profit-making and narrative regurgitation. Drawing upon a wide range of filmic examples from early cinema to the twenty-first century, this book reveals the increasing popularity of, and experimentation with, film sequels as a central dynamic of Hollywood cinema. Now creeping into world cinemas and independent film festivals, the sequel is persistently employed as a vehicle for cross-cultural dialogue and as a structure by which memories and cultural narratives can be circulated across geographical and historical locations. This book aims to account for some of the major critical contexts within which sequelisation operates by exploring sequel production beyond box office figures. Its account ranges across sequels in recent mainstream cinema, art-house and ‘indie’ sequels, non-Hollywood sequels, the effects of the domestic market on sequelisation and the impact of the video game industry on Hollywood.Less
The film sequel has been much maligned in popular culture as a vampirish corporative exercise in profit-making and narrative regurgitation. Drawing upon a wide range of filmic examples from early cinema to the twenty-first century, this book reveals the increasing popularity of, and experimentation with, film sequels as a central dynamic of Hollywood cinema. Now creeping into world cinemas and independent film festivals, the sequel is persistently employed as a vehicle for cross-cultural dialogue and as a structure by which memories and cultural narratives can be circulated across geographical and historical locations. This book aims to account for some of the major critical contexts within which sequelisation operates by exploring sequel production beyond box office figures. Its account ranges across sequels in recent mainstream cinema, art-house and ‘indie’ sequels, non-Hollywood sequels, the effects of the domestic market on sequelisation and the impact of the video game industry on Hollywood.
John Caughie, Trevor Griffiths, and María A. Vélez-Serna (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474420341
- eISBN:
- 9781474444644
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420341.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound ...
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This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.
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This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.
Catherine Zimmer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479864379
- eISBN:
- 9781479876853
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479864379.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The book’s introduction provides a historical overview of the intersections of cinema and surveillance and of the theoretical treatment of surveillance in film. Through analysis of the shared ...
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The book’s introduction provides a historical overview of the intersections of cinema and surveillance and of the theoretical treatment of surveillance in film. Through analysis of the shared technological histories of surveillance and film, as well as exemplary instances of early cinema, it shows the close relationship between the development of narrative technique in film and surveillance practice, arguing that both are deeply implicated in forming racial visibility, and thus that surveillance and cinema are racial projects. This introduction also suggests that such an analysis of surveillance in cinema has been constrained in part by overreliance on the conceptual framework of “voyeurism” and argues that voyeurism must itself be understood as existing within a historical and political context. The introduction thus provides a short analysis of the canonical surveillance film The Conversation to demonstrate how cinematic narrative and surveillance practice function together in the formation of both personal and political subjectivity. The remainder of the introduction provides outlines of the chapters of the book, which address more contemporary films and genres and introduce new theoretical frames through which to understand surveillance through cinema, and vice versa.Less
The book’s introduction provides a historical overview of the intersections of cinema and surveillance and of the theoretical treatment of surveillance in film. Through analysis of the shared technological histories of surveillance and film, as well as exemplary instances of early cinema, it shows the close relationship between the development of narrative technique in film and surveillance practice, arguing that both are deeply implicated in forming racial visibility, and thus that surveillance and cinema are racial projects. This introduction also suggests that such an analysis of surveillance in cinema has been constrained in part by overreliance on the conceptual framework of “voyeurism” and argues that voyeurism must itself be understood as existing within a historical and political context. The introduction thus provides a short analysis of the canonical surveillance film The Conversation to demonstrate how cinematic narrative and surveillance practice function together in the formation of both personal and political subjectivity. The remainder of the introduction provides outlines of the chapters of the book, which address more contemporary films and genres and introduce new theoretical frames through which to understand surveillance through cinema, and vice versa.
Maite Conde
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520290983
- eISBN:
- 9780520964884
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520290983.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The first screening of films in Brazil took place on July 8, 1896. Journalists immediately praised the movies’ modernity and their progressive dimensions. Their commentaries support the commonly held ...
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The first screening of films in Brazil took place on July 8, 1896. Journalists immediately praised the movies’ modernity and their progressive dimensions. Their commentaries support the commonly held premise that cinema was related to the onset of modernity. In Brazil, relationship had a very specific impetus. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, followed a year later by the ousting of the imperial monarchy, a new Republican regime (1889–1930) set out to redefine Brazil’s identity. Its peripheral status was to be a thing of the past, and incorporating European discourses of civilization and progress, the country was recast as a modern nation of order and progress. The cinema’s development was inextricably related to this modernizing project, with the medium helping to visualize Brazil’s civilized identity. Foundational Films explores the cinema’s particular invention of modernity in Brazil. Examining an array of early movies, including urban films, ethnographic documentaries, Hollywood-inspired movies, and avant-garde cinematic experimentations, and exploring their connections to other cultural forms, like maps, magazines, photography, science, and literature, the book looks at how cinema helped to project modern foundations for the Brazilian nation. The first sustained historical study of the cinema’s emergence in Brazil, Foundational Films is a fascinating account that illustrates the significance of the movies and their ability to project a national identity. It is an innovative and in-depth look at the cultural history of modernity in Brazil through the lens of a foundational moment in the country’s cinema.Less
The first screening of films in Brazil took place on July 8, 1896. Journalists immediately praised the movies’ modernity and their progressive dimensions. Their commentaries support the commonly held premise that cinema was related to the onset of modernity. In Brazil, relationship had a very specific impetus. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, followed a year later by the ousting of the imperial monarchy, a new Republican regime (1889–1930) set out to redefine Brazil’s identity. Its peripheral status was to be a thing of the past, and incorporating European discourses of civilization and progress, the country was recast as a modern nation of order and progress. The cinema’s development was inextricably related to this modernizing project, with the medium helping to visualize Brazil’s civilized identity. Foundational Films explores the cinema’s particular invention of modernity in Brazil. Examining an array of early movies, including urban films, ethnographic documentaries, Hollywood-inspired movies, and avant-garde cinematic experimentations, and exploring their connections to other cultural forms, like maps, magazines, photography, science, and literature, the book looks at how cinema helped to project modern foundations for the Brazilian nation. The first sustained historical study of the cinema’s emergence in Brazil, Foundational Films is a fascinating account that illustrates the significance of the movies and their ability to project a national identity. It is an innovative and in-depth look at the cultural history of modernity in Brazil through the lens of a foundational moment in the country’s cinema.
Ian Christie
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, written by Ian Christie, confronts the challenge of how to do media history, considering how ‘intermediate’ media live on, or are revived, in other media. This is not a model of media ...
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This chapter, written by Ian Christie, confronts the challenge of how to do media history, considering how ‘intermediate’ media live on, or are revived, in other media. This is not a model of media history according to the logic of the survival of the fittest, a Darwinian take, nor the teleological model associated with the linear medium of print but, arguably, a cinematic model, and an early cinematic one at that. Media history here is not understood according to the language of later cinema, through the cut and the edit, nor the continuity principle, rather it works by dissolves and overlaps, in precisely the manner that many of the earliest films did. As Christie illustrates, the technologies of the kinetoscope, praxinoscope, and filoscope are not ‘stepping stones “towards” cinema proper’, but (co)exist in an ‘ongoing ensemble, with frequent revivals and repurposings’.Less
This chapter, written by Ian Christie, confronts the challenge of how to do media history, considering how ‘intermediate’ media live on, or are revived, in other media. This is not a model of media history according to the logic of the survival of the fittest, a Darwinian take, nor the teleological model associated with the linear medium of print but, arguably, a cinematic model, and an early cinematic one at that. Media history here is not understood according to the language of later cinema, through the cut and the edit, nor the continuity principle, rather it works by dissolves and overlaps, in precisely the manner that many of the earliest films did. As Christie illustrates, the technologies of the kinetoscope, praxinoscope, and filoscope are not ‘stepping stones “towards” cinema proper’, but (co)exist in an ‘ongoing ensemble, with frequent revivals and repurposings’.
Jeffrey Geiger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748621477
- eISBN:
- 9780748670796
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748621477.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
American Documentary Film focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US ...
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American Documentary Film focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US culture, history, and national identity. Documentary has long been a negotiated and changing concept: a site of social, intellectual, and aesthetic investment keenly fought over and debated. In this sense documentary films also create a kind of public space: they act as sites for community-building, public expression, and social innovation; they contribute to the public sphere. This book distills key aspects of the documentary idea while tracing the form's development over time, focusing on the ways documentaries have given shape to the experience and comprehension of a national imaginary. Combining comprehensive overviews with in-depth case studies, Geiger examines the impact of pre- and early cinema, travelogues, the avant-garde, 1930s social documentary, Second World War propaganda, direct cinema, postmodernism and the crisis of ‘truth’, and the new media age.Less
American Documentary Film focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US culture, history, and national identity. Documentary has long been a negotiated and changing concept: a site of social, intellectual, and aesthetic investment keenly fought over and debated. In this sense documentary films also create a kind of public space: they act as sites for community-building, public expression, and social innovation; they contribute to the public sphere. This book distills key aspects of the documentary idea while tracing the form's development over time, focusing on the ways documentaries have given shape to the experience and comprehension of a national imaginary. Combining comprehensive overviews with in-depth case studies, Geiger examines the impact of pre- and early cinema, travelogues, the avant-garde, 1930s social documentary, Second World War propaganda, direct cinema, postmodernism and the crisis of ‘truth’, and the new media age.
Paola Voci
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824846817
- eISBN:
- 9780824868116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824846817.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter explores one line of development in DV independent production, which concerns short digital animations that are made by and/or circulated for online (or on-mobile) movie-makers/viewers. ...
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This chapter explores one line of development in DV independent production, which concerns short digital animations that are made by and/or circulated for online (or on-mobile) movie-makers/viewers. Compared to institutionalized mass-consumed animation, these independently produced digital animations cinema are unregulated, un-marketed and unbranded (i.e., freely gifted and shared), and occupy an amateur space outside, although not fully separated from, the growing animation industry in China. By conceptualizing such animations as animateur cinema, the author examines its distinctive contribution to “alternative” cultural spaces, broadly defined by non-institutional and unofficial locations. Besides being an important and yet still quite undervalued development of DV culture in the contemporary Chinese context, Chinese animateur cinema’s modalities of production and distribution also establish important lines of connection with early cinematic practices and therefore contribute a new perspective to the broader re-thinking of cinema in the digital age.Less
This chapter explores one line of development in DV independent production, which concerns short digital animations that are made by and/or circulated for online (or on-mobile) movie-makers/viewers. Compared to institutionalized mass-consumed animation, these independently produced digital animations cinema are unregulated, un-marketed and unbranded (i.e., freely gifted and shared), and occupy an amateur space outside, although not fully separated from, the growing animation industry in China. By conceptualizing such animations as animateur cinema, the author examines its distinctive contribution to “alternative” cultural spaces, broadly defined by non-institutional and unofficial locations. Besides being an important and yet still quite undervalued development of DV culture in the contemporary Chinese context, Chinese animateur cinema’s modalities of production and distribution also establish important lines of connection with early cinematic practices and therefore contribute a new perspective to the broader re-thinking of cinema in the digital age.
Jeffrey Geiger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748621477
- eISBN:
- 9780748670796
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748621477.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 1 looks at ‘authentic attractions’ and at phenomena that might be referred to as ‘documentary before documentary’. Though the documentary film had not yet formally come into being, one might ...
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Chapter 1 looks at ‘authentic attractions’ and at phenomena that might be referred to as ‘documentary before documentary’. Though the documentary film had not yet formally come into being, one might discern a documentary ‘impulse’ in the combination of education, edification, sensation, and entertaining display encountered in sites such as the Midway Plaisance at the Chicago Exposition of 1893. This event brought together efforts to invoke a distinct American national identity through an amalgam of technologies, commercial ventures, cultural expectations, and ideological notions that fed into early cinema in the US, and into a popular taste for nonfiction actualities. The chapter moves on to examine films of the Edison Company, suggesting that rather than see these early films as ‘documents’ as opposed to fully fledged ‘documentaries’ we might consider how they lie at the heart of the documentary tradition, in no small part due to their interactions with a national imaginary.Less
Chapter 1 looks at ‘authentic attractions’ and at phenomena that might be referred to as ‘documentary before documentary’. Though the documentary film had not yet formally come into being, one might discern a documentary ‘impulse’ in the combination of education, edification, sensation, and entertaining display encountered in sites such as the Midway Plaisance at the Chicago Exposition of 1893. This event brought together efforts to invoke a distinct American national identity through an amalgam of technologies, commercial ventures, cultural expectations, and ideological notions that fed into early cinema in the US, and into a popular taste for nonfiction actualities. The chapter moves on to examine films of the Edison Company, suggesting that rather than see these early films as ‘documents’ as opposed to fully fledged ‘documentaries’ we might consider how they lie at the heart of the documentary tradition, in no small part due to their interactions with a national imaginary.
J. P. Telotte
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125862
- eISBN:
- 9780813135540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125862.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the efforts of early cinema that call attention to the space in which they operate. It looks at the variety of forms that early film animation took, and some of the spatial ...
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This chapter discusses the efforts of early cinema that call attention to the space in which they operate. It looks at the variety of forms that early film animation took, and some of the spatial possibilities that characterized these works.Less
This chapter discusses the efforts of early cinema that call attention to the space in which they operate. It looks at the variety of forms that early film animation took, and some of the spatial possibilities that characterized these works.
Nico Baumbach
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he ...
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This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he first registered the potential of cinema. It is not the spectacular that Méliès notices, but the incidental detail of moving leaves in the background of the film. Baumbach homes in on this incidental detail to explore the significance it held for filmmakers, including D. W. Griffith. Baumbach addresses film’s power to construct palpable, seemingly concrete visual phenomena, though here he examines the transitory aesthetics of the ‘wind in the trees’. Baumbach enriches the interest in what Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault called the ‘cinema of attractions’ by suggesting, via detours into Kant, Benjamin, German Romantic poetry, and Impressionist painting, that the inscription of the incidental could often be as powerful as the spectacular.Less
This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he first registered the potential of cinema. It is not the spectacular that Méliès notices, but the incidental detail of moving leaves in the background of the film. Baumbach homes in on this incidental detail to explore the significance it held for filmmakers, including D. W. Griffith. Baumbach addresses film’s power to construct palpable, seemingly concrete visual phenomena, though here he examines the transitory aesthetics of the ‘wind in the trees’. Baumbach enriches the interest in what Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault called the ‘cinema of attractions’ by suggesting, via detours into Kant, Benjamin, German Romantic poetry, and Impressionist painting, that the inscription of the incidental could often be as powerful as the spectacular.
Paul Foster
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719089770
- eISBN:
- 9781781708651
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089770.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The ...
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In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The film forcefully reminds us that Dracula and cinema are contemporaneous; fin-de-siècle Gothic and cinema emerge concurrently because they are produced out of the same cultural, social and historical forces. Supernatural claims were made on behalf of cinematic technology: ‘death will no longer be final’, concluded one account of the Lumière Cinématographe premiere. Less enamoured reporters described the new medium in strange and spectral, even deathly, terms; most famously perhaps, Maxim Gorky: ‘Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows…’. But if there was something ‘Gothic’ about emergent cinema, there was something ‘cinematic’ about the resurgent Gothic. This chapter identifies and analyses proto-filmic elements in works by Stevenson, Wilde, Wells and Stoker.Less
In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The film forcefully reminds us that Dracula and cinema are contemporaneous; fin-de-siècle Gothic and cinema emerge concurrently because they are produced out of the same cultural, social and historical forces. Supernatural claims were made on behalf of cinematic technology: ‘death will no longer be final’, concluded one account of the Lumière Cinématographe premiere. Less enamoured reporters described the new medium in strange and spectral, even deathly, terms; most famously perhaps, Maxim Gorky: ‘Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows…’. But if there was something ‘Gothic’ about emergent cinema, there was something ‘cinematic’ about the resurgent Gothic. This chapter identifies and analyses proto-filmic elements in works by Stevenson, Wilde, Wells and Stoker.
Helen Groth
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748669486
- eISBN:
- 9780748695171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748669486.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the relationship between two influential figures in British early cinema, Cecil Hepworth and Robert Paul. Hepworth literally forged his cinematic vision out of Pauls’ discarded ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between two influential figures in British early cinema, Cecil Hepworth and Robert Paul. Hepworth literally forged his cinematic vision out of Pauls’ discarded frames. The first section traces the emergence of Hepworth’s language of cinema out of a bricolage of images, concepts and technologies – primarily the magic lantern, the cinematograph, the psychology of the persistence of vision, and popular storytelling devices. The second section focuses on Hepworth’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures (1903). This film reflects Hepworth’s interest in the visual effects of continuity, integrating image and text in a format that supplemented what he saw as the distracting flicker effects of the cinematograph with titles designed to trigger the audience’s memory of Carroll’s familiar tale. The final section of this chapter reveals the continuities between Hepworth’s screen practice and Hugo Munsterberg’s psychological approach to film. Resonating with Munsterberg’s stress on the analogy between film and mind, the memory of reading Alice’s Adventures that Hepworth’s channels through his film was intended to elide the space between the images projected on the screen and the nostalgic stream of images generated in the minds of the audience by Carroll’s words and Tenniel’s popular illustrations.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between two influential figures in British early cinema, Cecil Hepworth and Robert Paul. Hepworth literally forged his cinematic vision out of Pauls’ discarded frames. The first section traces the emergence of Hepworth’s language of cinema out of a bricolage of images, concepts and technologies – primarily the magic lantern, the cinematograph, the psychology of the persistence of vision, and popular storytelling devices. The second section focuses on Hepworth’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures (1903). This film reflects Hepworth’s interest in the visual effects of continuity, integrating image and text in a format that supplemented what he saw as the distracting flicker effects of the cinematograph with titles designed to trigger the audience’s memory of Carroll’s familiar tale. The final section of this chapter reveals the continuities between Hepworth’s screen practice and Hugo Munsterberg’s psychological approach to film. Resonating with Munsterberg’s stress on the analogy between film and mind, the memory of reading Alice’s Adventures that Hepworth’s channels through his film was intended to elide the space between the images projected on the screen and the nostalgic stream of images generated in the minds of the audience by Carroll’s words and Tenniel’s popular illustrations.
Peter Bosma
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231174596
- eISBN:
- 9780231850827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174596.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter offers two case studies of curating a film programme. The first case study focuses on curating programmes of silent films. The body of work concerned consists of films made in the period ...
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This chapter offers two case studies of curating a film programme. The first case study focuses on curating programmes of silent films. The body of work concerned consists of films made in the period between 1895 and roughly 1927, so this raises the question of how these very old films relate to an audience in the twenty-first century. In this case, the task of the film curator is to discover the quality that is not immediately obvious and recognisable. There are silent films that withstand the test of time, and can be enjoyed autonomously, yet are still not widely known. It is one of the privileges of a film curator to highlight these masterpieces of early cinema. The second study explores the curatorial strategy of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, wherein the traditional set-up of presenting film in a cinema hall is deconstructed by means of several loops on multi-screens, offering a totally new viewing experience.Less
This chapter offers two case studies of curating a film programme. The first case study focuses on curating programmes of silent films. The body of work concerned consists of films made in the period between 1895 and roughly 1927, so this raises the question of how these very old films relate to an audience in the twenty-first century. In this case, the task of the film curator is to discover the quality that is not immediately obvious and recognisable. There are silent films that withstand the test of time, and can be enjoyed autonomously, yet are still not widely known. It is one of the privileges of a film curator to highlight these masterpieces of early cinema. The second study explores the curatorial strategy of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, wherein the traditional set-up of presenting film in a cinema hall is deconstructed by means of several loops on multi-screens, offering a totally new viewing experience.
Garrett Stewart
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226201214
- eISBN:
- 9780226201351
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226201351.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Tracing the psychological and formal links between voyeurism and surveillance back to two of the earliest one-reeler experiments in British narrative cinema, A Soldier’s Kiss and the minimal police ...
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Tracing the psychological and formal links between voyeurism and surveillance back to two of the earliest one-reeler experiments in British narrative cinema, A Soldier’s Kiss and the minimal police procedural Arrest of a Pickpocket, with their respective overtones of a looking now illicit, now law-enforcing, these introductory pages assert, and begin to demonstrate, the continuing value of suture theory in regard both to what Thomas Y. Levin calls “surveillant enunciation” in film rhetoric and to what is extrapolated here from Christian Metz’s work as a “tertiary identification”—beyond that with (1) camera and (2) character—aligning our visual field with the inset and remote-controlled image in the articulation of certain screen narratives. Although early formalist Vladimir Propp identifies “surveillance” as one of the foundational functions of narrative, the prominence of its activated lines of sight in an ensuing century of cinema, and especially in the digital era, has not just outstripped anything imagined by his emphasis but has come to delimit almost a subgenre of its own.Less
Tracing the psychological and formal links between voyeurism and surveillance back to two of the earliest one-reeler experiments in British narrative cinema, A Soldier’s Kiss and the minimal police procedural Arrest of a Pickpocket, with their respective overtones of a looking now illicit, now law-enforcing, these introductory pages assert, and begin to demonstrate, the continuing value of suture theory in regard both to what Thomas Y. Levin calls “surveillant enunciation” in film rhetoric and to what is extrapolated here from Christian Metz’s work as a “tertiary identification”—beyond that with (1) camera and (2) character—aligning our visual field with the inset and remote-controlled image in the articulation of certain screen narratives. Although early formalist Vladimir Propp identifies “surveillance” as one of the foundational functions of narrative, the prominence of its activated lines of sight in an ensuing century of cinema, and especially in the digital era, has not just outstripped anything imagined by his emphasis but has come to delimit almost a subgenre of its own.
