New Publications
Maite Conde, Foundational Films. Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil (University of California Press, 2018)
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.…
Martin L. Johnson, Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States (Indiana University Press, 2018)
“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…
Isak Thorsen, Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906–1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear (KINtop 5)
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…
Marc Vernet, Hollywood was born thus. Before the Golden Age, the Ambitions of Triangle Film and the First Studios (Armand Colin, 2018)
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…
Charlie Keil, ed. A Companion to D. W. Griffith (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018)
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…
Marion Polirsztok, Action/Spectacle/Idea: Forms of the American Silent Cinema (Mimesis, 2018)
Maggie Hennefeld, Specters of Slapstick & Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia University Press, 2018)
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…
Kristen Anderson Wagner, Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film (Wayne State University Press, 2018)
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…
Gary D. Rhodes, The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
Using thousands of primary sources and long-unseen illustrations, The Birth of the American Horror Film examines a history that begins in colonial Salem, taking an interdisciplinary approach to explore the influence of horror-themed literature, theatre and visual culture in America, and how that context established…
Nicoletta Leonardi & Simone Natale, ed. Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (Penn State University Press, 2018)
Latest Issue of “Synoptique” about Moving Image Archival Training
SYNOPTIQUE : An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies 6:1 Institutionalizing Moving Image Archival Training: Analyses, Histories, Theories To speak of moving image archiving as a professional field with practitioners who have completed vocational training is a recent phenomenon. Numerous specialized degrees emerged since the…
Steve Massa, Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy (Albany: BearManor Media, 2017)
Vanda Krefft, The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox (New York: HarperCollins, 2017)
Adam Begley, The Great Nadar : The Man Behind the Camera (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017)
Latest Issue of the FIAF Journal of Preservation (#97, October 2017)
Tony Fletcher, Regulating the Cinematograph in London 1897-1906 (London: Local History Publications, 2017)
Mattia Lento, The discovery of the film actor in Europe (book in Italian)
This book entitled The Discovery of the Film Actor in Europe: Acting, Film Experience and Osentation during the ‘Seconde Epoque’ portrays the revolution that occurred in production, distribution and performance with Asta Nielsen’s films in 1910. Mattia Lento delineates the characteristic features of the…
