Early Cinema Today

Early Cinema Today
Author: Martin Loiperdinger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0861969022

A collection of essays exploring current issues in early film archiving, curation, and research. Invented in the 1890s and premiered in Paris by the Lumière brothers, the cinematograph along with Louis Le Prince’s single-lens camera projector are considered by film historians to be the precursors to modern-day motion picture devices. These early movies were often shown in town halls, on fairgrounds, and in theaters, requiring special showmanship skills to effectively work the equipment and entertain onlookers. Within the last decade, film archives and film festivals have unearthed this lost art and have featured outstanding examples of the culture of early cinema reconfigured for today’s audiences. “[T]oday’s programming of early cinema . . . has to consider the audience if it wants to be successful in making the visual heritage available to as many people as possible. Early Cinema Today shows in a fascinating, versatile, and refreshing way how this can be implemented. . . . [This book] provides practitioners with innovative ideas on how to engage potential audiences, while providing scholars with valuable insight into how film archivists and curators shape perceptions of early cinema and, through this, the direction of film scholarship.” —The Moving Image “[This] collection presents a wide range of approaches to the programming of early film, both historically and in the present-day context, while sounding a vibrant and timely call to review the relation that has evolved between scholars, archivists, and film programmers in matters relating to the programming of early cinema today.” —Film History

Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema

Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema
Author: Tom Gunning
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Color cinematography
ISBN: 9789089646576

Presents and discusses a treasure trove of early color film images from the archives of EYE Film Institute Netherlands, bringing to life their rich hues and forgotten splendor.

A Companion to Early Cinema

A Companion to Early Cinema
Author: André Gaudreault
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 660
Release: 2012-07-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1444332317

An authoritative and much-needed overview of the main issues in the field of early cinema from over 30 leading international scholars in the field First collection of its kind to offer in one reference: original theory, new research, and reviews of existing studies in the field Features over 30 original essays from some of the leading scholars in early cinema and Film Studies, including Tom Gunning, Jane Gaines, Richard Abel, Thomas Elsaesser, and André Gaudreault Caters to renewed interest in film studies’ historical methods, with strict analysis of multiple and competing sources, providing a critical re-contextualization of films, printed material and technologies Covers a range of topics in early cinema, such as exhibition, promotion, industry, pre-cinema, and film criticism Broaches the latest research on the subject of archival practices, important particularly in the current digital context

Provenance and Early Cinema

Provenance and Early Cinema
Author: Joanne Bernardi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253053021

Remnants of early films often have a story to tell. As material artifacts, these film fragments are central to cinema history, perhaps more than ever in our digital age of easy copying and sharing. If a digital copy is previewed before preservation or is shared with a researcher outside the purview of a film archive, knowledge about how the artifact was collected, circulated, and repurposed threatens to become obscured. When the question of origin is overlooked, the story can be lost. Concerned contributors in Provenance and Early Cinema challenge scholars digging through film archives to ask, "How did these moving images get here for me to see them?" This volume, which features the conference proceedings from Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, 2018, questions preservation, attribution, and patterns of reuse in order to explore singular artifacts with long and circuitous lives.

Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception

Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception
Author: Yuri Tsivian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2005-08-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134910398

In Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception Yuri Tsivian examines the development of cinematic form and culture in Russia, from its late nineteenth-century beginnings as a fairground attraction to the early post-Revolutionary years. Tsivian traces the changing perceptions of cinema and its social transition from a modernist invention to a national art form. He explores reactions to the earliest films, from actors, novelists, poets, writers, and journalists. His richly detailed study of the physical elements of cinematic performance includes the architecture and illumination of the cinema foyer, the speed of projection and film acoustics. In contrast to standard film histories, this book focuses on reflected images: rather than discussing films and film-makers, it features the historical film-goer and early writings on film. Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception presents a vivid and changing picture of cinema culture in Russia in the twilight of the tsarist era and the first decades of the twentieth century. Tsivian's study expands the whole context of reception studies and opens up questions about reception relevant to other national cinemas.

The West in Early Cinema

The West in Early Cinema
Author: Nanna Verhoeff
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 905356831X

Verhoeff investigates the emergence of the western genre, made in the first two decades of cinema (1895-1915). By analyzing many unknown and forgotten films from international archives she traces the relationships between films about the American West, their surrounding films, and other popular media such as photography, painting, (pulp) literature, Wild West Shows and popular ethnography. Through this exploration of archival material she raises new questions of historiography and provides a model for historical analysis. These first traces of the Western film reveal a preoccupation with presence and actuality that informs us about the way in which film, as new medium, took shape within the context of its contemporary visual culture. In The West in Early Cinema gaat Nanna Verhoeff op zoek naar de nog onbekende beginjaren van het westerngenre tijdens de eerste twee decennia van het medium film 1895-1915). Aan de hand van onbekende en vergeten films uit internationale filmarchieven traceert zij de relaties tussen films over het Westen, omringende filmgenres uit deze periode, en andere populaire media als fotografie, schilderkunst, (pulp)literatuur, Wild West Shows en populaire etnografie. Deze sporen van het genre tonen een grote actualiteit en variatie, die laat zien op welke manier de film als nieuw medium een vorm vond binnen de toenmalige visuele cultuur.

Early Cinema and the "National"

Early Cinema and the
Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2008-12-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0861969154

Essays on “how motion pictures in the first two decades of the 20th century constructed ‘communities of nationality’ . . . recommended.” —Choice While many studies have been written on national cinemas, Early Cinema and the “National” is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms, but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices, and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated landmark anthology are devoted to reconsidering the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. Many of the 34 contributors show that concepts of a national identity played a role in establishing the parameters of cinema’s early development, from technological change to discourses of stardom, from emerging genres to intertitling practices. Yet, as others attest, national meanings could often become knotty in other contexts, when concepts of nationhood were contested in relation to colonial/imperial histories and regional configurations. Early Cinema and the “National” takes stock of a formative moment in cinema history, tracing the beginnings of the process whereby nations learned to imagine themselves through moving images.

Encyclopedia of Early Cinema

Encyclopedia of Early Cinema
Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 824
Release: 2005
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0415234409

One-volume reference work on the first twenty-five years of the cinema's international emergence from the early 1890s to the mid-1910s.

Early Cinema

Early Cinema
Author: Simon Popple
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 023185031X

This book introduces the reader to the study of cinema as a series of aesthetic, technological, cultural, ideological and economic debates while exploring new and challenging approaches to the subject. It explores the period 1895 to 1914 when cinema established itself as the leading form of visual culture among rapidly expanding global media, emerging from a rich tradition of scientific, economic, entertainment and educational practices and quickly developing as a worldwide institution.

The Image in Early Cinema

The Image in Early Cinema
Author: Scott Curtis
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253034426

In The Image in Early Cinema, the contributors examine intersections between early cinematic form, technology, theory, practice, and broader modes of visual culture. They argue that early cinema emerged within a visual culture composed of a variety of traditions in art, science, education, and image making. Even as methods of motion picture production and distribution materialized, they drew from and challenged practices and conventions in other mediums. This rich visual culture produced a complicated, overlapping network of image-making traditions, innovations, and borrowing among painting, tableaux vivants, photography, and other pictorial and projection practices. Using a variety of concepts and theories, the contributors explore these crisscrossing traditions and work against an essentialist notion of media to conceptualize the dynamic interrelationship between images and their context.