Slides for the magic or optical lantern were a major tool for knowledge transfer in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Schools, universities, the church and many public and private institutions all over the world relied on the lantern for illustrated…
The early years of film were dominated by competition between inventors in America and France, especially Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers . But while these have generally been considered the foremost pioneers of film, they were not the only crucial figures in its inception.…
Motor City Movie Culture, 1916–1925 is a broad textured look at Hollywood coming of age in a city with a burgeoning population and complex demographics. Richard Abel investigates the role of local Detroit organizations in producing, distributing, exhibiting, and publicizing films in an effort to…
Already in the late nineteenth century, electricians, physicists, and telegraph technicians dreamed of inventing televisual communication apparatuses that would “see” by electricity as a means of extending human perception. In Seeing by Electricity Doron Galili traces the early history of television, from fantastical image transmission…
When watching the latest instalment of Batman, it is perfectly normal to say that we see Batman fighting Bane or that we see Bruce Wayne making love to Miranda Tate. We would not say that we see Christian Bale dressed up as Batman going through…
This is the first volume dedicated to Maurice Mariaud, French and Portuguese actor and director, author of about forty films and actor in about fifteen others by Feuillade, Fescourt, Lacroix, Perret, Burguet – in addition to his own. Frédéric Monnier’s research, which has been carried out…
This special issue of the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film (Vol. 45, no. 1, 2018) is on The Actress-Manager and Early Film. It explores how female entrepreneurial engagement in new commerce, new markets and new forms of theatre might help us interpret the rich…
Why do early films present the Netherlands as a country full of canals and windmills, where people wear traditional costumes and wooden shoes, while industries and modern urban life are all but absent? Images of Dutchness investigates the roots of this visual repertoire from diverse…
Through this book, Bernard Bastide (an expert on Louis Feuillade and Jacques de Baroncelli) brings to light the early cinema career of Joë Hamman, a filmmaker, artist, and actor, who conceived his acting in a fundamentally sober and athletic way. More precisely, the book describes how…
In her authoritative new book, Maite Conde introduces readers to the crucial early years of Brazilian cinema. Focusing on silent films released during the First Republic (1889-1930), Foundational Films explores how the medium became implicated in a larger project to transform Brazil into a modern nation.…
“See yourself in the movies!” Prior to the advent of the home movie camera and the ubiquitousness of the camera phone, there was the local film. This cultural phenomenon, produced across the country from the 1890s to the 1950s, gave ordinary people a chance to be…
This is the first comprehensive study of the Danish film company, Nordisk Films Kompagni, in the silent era. Based on archival research, primarily in the company’s surviving business archives, this volume of KINtop describes and analyzes how Nordisk Film became one of the leading players…
Based on the Triangle Film Corporation archive, this study traces back the brief and hectic history of this pioneering Hollywood company and, through it, of the earliest studio settlements in Los Angeles during the first half of the 1910s. Marc Vernet describes the decisive mutations…
This volume offers an exhaustive look at the first acknowledged auteur of the cinema and provides an authoritative account of the director’s life, work, and lasting filmic legacy. The numerous contributions (most authored by Domitor members) explore how Griffith’s style and status advanced along with cinema’s…
In early slapstick films with titles such as Saucy Sue, Mary Jane’s Mishap, Jane on Strike, and The Consequences of Feminism, comediennes exhibit the tensions between joyful laughter and gendered violence. Slapstick comedy often celebrates the exaggeration of make-believe injury. Unlike male clowns, however, these…
Female comedians such as Gale Henry, Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Constance Talmadge were wildly popular during the silent film era, appearing in countless motion pictures and earning top salaries, and yet their names have been almost entirely forgotten. As a consequence, recovering their history is…
