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.
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.
Claire Dupré La Tour
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266434
- eISBN:
- 9780191884191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266434.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional ...
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The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional advertisements can be found in the UK in catalogues of James Williamson (1899) and Robert William Paul (1901), and in France in a catalogue of the Parnaland film company (1901). Although evidence shows that Pathé was using this technique in 1901, catalogues from its British branch reveal that it advertised it from May 1903. The advertisements highlighted positive outcomes for producers and exhibitors, and promoted titles in a variety of languages. This early titling strategy allowed Pathé to get ahead of its competitors in terms of industrialisation, control over its product, and domestic and foreign market share. This chapter focuses on early filmed titling and intertitling practices, Pathé’s innovative offer in 1903, and its evolution until 1908.Less
The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional advertisements can be found in the UK in catalogues of James Williamson (1899) and Robert William Paul (1901), and in France in a catalogue of the Parnaland film company (1901). Although evidence shows that Pathé was using this technique in 1901, catalogues from its British branch reveal that it advertised it from May 1903. The advertisements highlighted positive outcomes for producers and exhibitors, and promoted titles in a variety of languages. This early titling strategy allowed Pathé to get ahead of its competitors in terms of industrialisation, control over its product, and domestic and foreign market share. This chapter focuses on early filmed titling and intertitling practices, Pathé’s innovative offer in 1903, and its evolution until 1908.
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.
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.
Susan Potter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042461
- eISBN:
- 9780252051302
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042461.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to ...
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This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to lesbian representation, initially by reframing the emergence of lesbian figures in cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s as only the most visible and belated signs of an array of strategies of sexuality. The emergence of lesbian representation and spectatorship in early cinema is not a linear progression and consolidation but rather arises across multiple sites in dispersed forms that are modern and backward-looking, recursive and anachronistic. In this tumultuous period, new but not always coherent sexual knowledges and categories emerge, even as older modalities of homoeroticism persist. The book articulates some of the discursive and institutional processes by which women’s same-sex desires and identities have been reorganized as impossible, marginal or—perhaps not so surprisingly—central to new forms of cinematic representation and spectatorship. Complicating the critical consensus of feminist film theory and history, the book foregrounds the centrality of women’s same-sex desire to historically distinct cinematic discourses of both homo- and heterosexuality. It articulates across its chapters the emergence of lesbian sexuality—and that of its intimate “other,” heterosexuality—as the effect of diverse discursive operations of early cinema, considered as a complex assemblage of film texts, exhibition practices, modes of female spectatorship, and reception.Less
This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to lesbian representation, initially by reframing the emergence of lesbian figures in cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s as only the most visible and belated signs of an array of strategies of sexuality. The emergence of lesbian representation and spectatorship in early cinema is not a linear progression and consolidation but rather arises across multiple sites in dispersed forms that are modern and backward-looking, recursive and anachronistic. In this tumultuous period, new but not always coherent sexual knowledges and categories emerge, even as older modalities of homoeroticism persist. The book articulates some of the discursive and institutional processes by which women’s same-sex desires and identities have been reorganized as impossible, marginal or—perhaps not so surprisingly—central to new forms of cinematic representation and spectatorship. Complicating the critical consensus of feminist film theory and history, the book foregrounds the centrality of women’s same-sex desire to historically distinct cinematic discourses of both homo- and heterosexuality. It articulates across its chapters the emergence of lesbian sexuality—and that of its intimate “other,” heterosexuality—as the effect of diverse discursive operations of early cinema, considered as a complex assemblage of film texts, exhibition practices, modes of female spectatorship, and reception.
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’.
Susan Potter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042461
- eISBN:
- 9780252051302
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042461.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter situates the book as a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. The study is described as a post-Foucauldian history of sexuality that aims to sustain the ...
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This chapter situates the book as a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. The study is described as a post-Foucauldian history of sexuality that aims to sustain the radical implications of Foucault’s foundational work in History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, Volume 1. The chapter articulates the book’s approach in terms of queer historiography. One of its key strategies is the endeavor to suspend present-day sexual knowledges in the encounter with early films and other extrafilmic archival materials. To presume, at least before critical work commences, the sexual opacity of early cinema is to start from the position that the past is different from the present, particularly in terms of sexual subjectivity, but not to accede to a homophobic denial of the historical existence of same-sex desire or queer ways of living and being. The chapter explores the consequences of this approach for critical modes of identification, and queer articulations of historical time, in the context of recent debates concerning queer temporality.Less
This chapter situates the book as a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. The study is described as a post-Foucauldian history of sexuality that aims to sustain the radical implications of Foucault’s foundational work in History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, Volume 1. The chapter articulates the book’s approach in terms of queer historiography. One of its key strategies is the endeavor to suspend present-day sexual knowledges in the encounter with early films and other extrafilmic archival materials. To presume, at least before critical work commences, the sexual opacity of early cinema is to start from the position that the past is different from the present, particularly in terms of sexual subjectivity, but not to accede to a homophobic denial of the historical existence of same-sex desire or queer ways of living and being. The chapter explores the consequences of this approach for critical modes of identification, and queer articulations of historical time, in the context of recent debates concerning queer temporality.
Jonathan Zwicker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226656397
- eISBN:
- 9780226656427
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226656427.003.0016
- Subject:
- Music, Performing Practice/Studies
This chapter explores how silent cinema in Japan provided an important context for the development of the historiography of kabuki in the early twentieth century and the role played by the playwright ...
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This chapter explores how silent cinema in Japan provided an important context for the development of the historiography of kabuki in the early twentieth century and the role played by the playwright and theater historian Tsubouchi Shōyō in developing a history of Japanese drama that foregrounds gesture over voice. Beginning in the 1910s, Shōyō developed a conception of theatrical ukiyo-e prints as proto-cinematic and used this idea to argue for these prints as an archival record of theatrical gesture. At the same time, this conception of woodblock prints as a cinema-like archive deemphasized the role of the actor’s voice for which there was no equivalent record. Only in recent years have historians begun to explore the early history of sound recording of kabuki from the first decades of the twentieth century to argue for the role that these SP records might play in not only supplementing but fundamentally complicating a historiography of kabuki theater from which the actor’s voice has long been absent.Less
This chapter explores how silent cinema in Japan provided an important context for the development of the historiography of kabuki in the early twentieth century and the role played by the playwright and theater historian Tsubouchi Shōyō in developing a history of Japanese drama that foregrounds gesture over voice. Beginning in the 1910s, Shōyō developed a conception of theatrical ukiyo-e prints as proto-cinematic and used this idea to argue for these prints as an archival record of theatrical gesture. At the same time, this conception of woodblock prints as a cinema-like archive deemphasized the role of the actor’s voice for which there was no equivalent record. Only in recent years have historians begun to explore the early history of sound recording of kabuki from the first decades of the twentieth century to argue for the role that these SP records might play in not only supplementing but fundamentally complicating a historiography of kabuki theater from which the actor’s voice has long been absent.
Susan Potter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042461
- eISBN:
- 9780252051302
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042461.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This coda draws attention not only to the opacity of sexuality but its complex ordering across multiple, dynamic registers. It instigates a close reading of a digital fragment from the archive of ...
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This coda draws attention not only to the opacity of sexuality but its complex ordering across multiple, dynamic registers. It instigates a close reading of a digital fragment from the archive of early cinema in order to denaturalize processes of sexual representation and their interpretation, and to consider their imbrications in sexuality itself. It argues that the simultaneous sexual transparency and opacity of such digital fragments in the present foregrounds the ongoing value of an interdisciplinary film history while also sharpening the need to make explicit our perspectives, disciplinary frameworks, and approaches to film historiography.Less
This coda draws attention not only to the opacity of sexuality but its complex ordering across multiple, dynamic registers. It instigates a close reading of a digital fragment from the archive of early cinema in order to denaturalize processes of sexual representation and their interpretation, and to consider their imbrications in sexuality itself. It argues that the simultaneous sexual transparency and opacity of such digital fragments in the present foregrounds the ongoing value of an interdisciplinary film history while also sharpening the need to make explicit our perspectives, disciplinary frameworks, and approaches to film historiography.
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.
Megan Feeney
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226593555
- eISBN:
- 9780226593722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226593722.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving ...
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This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving pictures arrived in Havana just as Cubans achieved independence from Spain and founded their own nation. But, by forcing the Platt Amendment into Cuba’s constitution, the United States assured that Cuba was only “semi-sovereign” in relation to US power, exerted in the form of military occupations, political tinkering, trade policies, investors, and a flood of US-made goods. Among those goods were US-made films, which began to monopolize Havana’s multiplying moving picture halls especially during World War I, which saw the rise of Hollywood’s studio system and its global dominance. The big Hollywood studios had each opened a distribution office in Havana by the early 1920s, and a number operated their own “picture palaces,” to the dismay of local distributors and exhibitors. This chapter finds that Havana’s early cinemas—and the business and print cultures emerging around them—were sites where Cubans continued to forge their national identity through complex negotiations with US power. They were not just sites for the conveyance of US influence but also for the continued promotion of revolutionary Cuban nationalism.Less
This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving pictures arrived in Havana just as Cubans achieved independence from Spain and founded their own nation. But, by forcing the Platt Amendment into Cuba’s constitution, the United States assured that Cuba was only “semi-sovereign” in relation to US power, exerted in the form of military occupations, political tinkering, trade policies, investors, and a flood of US-made goods. Among those goods were US-made films, which began to monopolize Havana’s multiplying moving picture halls especially during World War I, which saw the rise of Hollywood’s studio system and its global dominance. The big Hollywood studios had each opened a distribution office in Havana by the early 1920s, and a number operated their own “picture palaces,” to the dismay of local distributors and exhibitors. This chapter finds that Havana’s early cinemas—and the business and print cultures emerging around them—were sites where Cubans continued to forge their national identity through complex negotiations with US power. They were not just sites for the conveyance of US influence but also for the continued promotion of revolutionary Cuban nationalism.
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.