How the Movies Got a Past

A Historiography of American Cinema, 1894-1930

Dimitrios Latsis (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

408 Seiten

2023
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-768927-1 (ISBN)

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How the Movies Got a Past presents a comprehensive survey of the rise of historiographical discourse on cinema in North America as it is reflected in publications, exhibitions, lectures, and films about the cinema as a technology, form of art, and source of entertainment, from its inception up to 1930. This pioneering historiography of American movies proposes a typology of genres of historical knowledge and examines the role that its articulation played in legitimating the moving image as a form of cultural heritage and a field of study.

How did early studios seek to understand and promote their own activities as part of a brand-new form of entertainment with its own traditions, "founding fathers," and ambitions? How did early writers modulate between retrospection and analysis, between nostalgia and ballyhoo, between journalism and research into the "relics" of the nascent film industry and what were their motivations and influence on subsequent historians? What rhetorical and material platforms were deployed to talk about and show the history of cinema and for what audiences were they meant? In teasing out answers to these and other questions, this book makes an argument for early cinema historiography as an emergent genre with its own conventions and goals instead of a "primitive" version of today's historical writing on the movies. With a wealth of case studies, and illustrations, How the Movies Got a Past will appeal to media historians, silent movie buffs, film archivists, and students alike.

Dimitrios Latsis is a historian and digital humanist working at the intersection of archiving and visual culture. He is Assistant Professor in Digital and Audiovisual Preservation at the University of Alabama's School of Library and Information Studies. His work on American visual culture, early cinema, archival studies, and the Digital Humanities has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, Domitor, Mellon, and Knight Foundations, and Canada's Social Studies and Humanities Research Council, among others. He is the co-editor of Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary (2020) with Steven Jacobs and Birgit Cleppe.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Evolving Practice of Film Historiography

Part I: Historiography

1. A Vivisection: Writing the History of an Emergent Medium
2. The First Canonical Histories: Ramsaye, Rotha and Beyond
3. Finding Its Voice? Sound and the (Re)-writing of Film History

PART II: Meta-History

4. Through a Glass Darkly: Early Nonfiction Films about the History of Cinema
5. Programming the Classics: Revivals, The Little Theater Movement and the Emergence of a Canon
6. The Future-Past of Moving Images: Towards a Pre-history of Film Archiving
7. Exhibitions and Museums: The Past of Cinema on Display
8. Invented Traditions: Commemorations and Anniversaries
9. Learning and Earning: Film History Enters the University Curriculum

Conclusion
Appendix: Silent Non-Fiction Films Related to the History of Cinema
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	02.08.2023
Zusatzinfo	50 b/w images
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	242 x 163 mm
Gewicht	708 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
ISBN-10	0-19-768927-2 / 0197689272
ISBN-13	978-0-19-768927-1 / 9780197689271
Zustand	Neuware