“Crank turners”, “Aces of the crank”, “Coffee mill turners”: so many expressions that refer to the profession of film camera operator, which this book aims to retrace the unpublished history. What were the possibilities of existence of this profession? What concrete tasks was the operator…
Musidora is considered one of the first female stars of French cinema. Her autographed photograph on the cover of this book, in the tight-fitting costume of the heroine of Louis Feuillade’s episodic film Les Vampires (1915), straight out of André Breton’s cabinet of curiosities, has…
Before he became an influential cinematic innovator, Georges Méliès (1861–1938) was a maker of deluxe French footwear, an illusionist, and a caricaturist. Proceeding from these beginnings, Méliès Boots traces how the full trajectory of Georges Méliès’ career during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, along with…
In recent decades, special effects have become a major new area of research in cinema studies. For the most part, they have been examined as spectacles or practical tools. In contrast, Special Effects and German Silent Film, foregrounds their function as an expressive device and their…
At the end of the 19th century, Charles Pathé’s company was in its infancy. But with the technological explosion and the European conquest of the world, the Compagnie générale des cinématographes, phonographes et pellicules – known as Pathé frères in the Far East – will…
Like the exhibition it accompanies, the catalogue “Cinema at last!” brings together the French film production of the years 1895-1907 with the history of the arts, from the invention of photography to the first years of the 20th century, through a number of major subjects:…
The Bug Trainer: Vladislav Starevich Creates Animation is the first book in Russian about the life and work of film director Vladislav (Ladislas) Starevich (1882-1965), who made innovative films using puppet animation. The figure of Starevich occupies a special place in the history of early…
In 1900, Paris had no skyscrapers, no tourist helicopters, no drones. Yet well before aviation made aerial views more accessible, those who sought such vantages had countless options available to them. They could take in the vista from an observation ride, see a painting of…
The 2018 Rochester Conference Committee and the Domitor EC are very happy to announce that the 2018 conference proceedings, Provenance and Early Cinema, published by Indiana University Press is now available! We would like to send a heartfelt thanks to the…
Any archivists who have held a piece of film in their hands, wondering how to go about identifying it, recognize the true value of film preservationist Harold Brown’s work. In 1967 Brown delivered a pioneering lecture on the identification of early films at the annual…
No living person has seen the earliest films of pioneering cinema magician, Georges Méliès. All that remain are his catalogs and a few archival images. The 2013 discovery of a flip book manufactured by an obscure Parisian bimbelotier, Léon Beaulieu, promised a glimpse of an…
In the early 20th century, the American film producer Charles Urban, who had founded his company in London, sent two of his camera operators out to the Balkans. The Englishman Charles Rider Noble recreated moments from the uprising that had broken out in Macedonia (part…
The kaleidoscope, the stereoscope, and other nineteenth-century optical toys analyzed as “new media” of their era, provoking anxieties similar to our own about children and screens. In the nineteenth century, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, the stereoscope, and other optical toys were standard accessories of…
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…
