Ten years ago, a technological revolution swept through cinemas around the world, as analogue projectors were replaced with digital equipment. It was not just the plastic medium of film that was removed from projection boxes during this transformation; most cinemas took this opportunity to also evict the human projectionists who were hitherto in charge of screenings. Projectionists had been hidden from the sight of audiences for most of the history of photographic moving image projection, and their redundancies went largely unnoticed and unremarked upon. This book focuses attention on what has been happening behind film spectators' heads for the past 130 years, and attempts to write the history of cinema in Britain from the perspective of its habitually overlooked and undervalued projectionists, beginning in the silent era and continuing to the present day. Drawing upon extensive archival research and lengthy interviews with former projectionists, it documents the key facets and challenges of their work, and how these evolved in response to previous waves of significant technological change. It evaluates how projectionists helped to design and maintain key aesthetic characteristics of the 20th century big screen experience. It shows how the institution of cinema in Britain has been historically underpinned by the harsh exploitation of projectionists by many employers, detailing inadequate wage levels and poor working conditions that formerly provoked government investigation, and explaining why these problems were never successfully ameliorated by trade unions. It also charts in depth the recent fateful transition to digital projection, delineating how and why projectionists were so swiftly and ruthlessly consigned to the past, and assessing whether this form of entertainment should be considered diminished by their super session.
Early films by Méliès, but Gaumont, Skladanowsky and Pathé suddenly came to life after more than a century! This meticulously researched volume reveals how these miraculous discoveries were made and features more than 500 previously unpublished images that you won't have seen anywhere else.
And, for animation novices and enthusiasts alike, Animation Behind the Iron Curtain offers breakout sections to explain many of the techniques and aesthetic considerations that go into this fascinating art form. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Cold War era and really cool animated films!
Authors of this collection of essays will include Richard Crangle, Sarah Dellmann, Ine van Dooren, Claire Dupré La Tour, Jenny Durrant, Francisco Javier Frutos Esteban, Anna Katharina Graskamp, Emily Hayes, Erkki Huhtamo, Martyn Jolly, Joe Kember, Frank Kessler, Machiko Kusahara, Sabine Lenk, Vanessa Otero, Carmen López San Segundo, Ariadna Lorenzo Sunyer, Daniel Pitarch, Jordi Pons, Montse Puigdeval, Angélique Quillay, Angel Quintana Morraja, Nadezhda Stanulevich, Jennifer Tucker, Kurt Vanhoutte, Márcia Vilarigues, Joseph Wachelder, Artemis Willis, Lee Wing Ki, Irene Suk Mei Wong, and Nele Wynants.
Studies exoticism in Post-War popular music. This work analyses the work of Les Baxter, Korla Pandit and Yma Sumac - the musicians who developed the style known as Exotica in the 1950s and 1960s. It also addresses more recent developments in musical exoticism which have revived and reflected the form, such as the career of New Age populist Yanni.
The book assembles comprehensive data on Stahls career, and on the forty feature films that he directed, half of them silent; of these silents, half have been found to survive, already inspiring film festival screenings and alerting scholars afresh to Stahls historical importance. The editors supply a wealth of introductory and linking material, providing a context for essays on each of the surviving films by an international range of writers: Jeremy Arnold (US), Tim Cawkwell (UK), Ed Gallafent (UK), Adrian Garvey (UK), Pamela Hutchinson (UK), Lea Jacobs (US), Richard Koszarski (US), Lawrence Napper (UK), Tom Ryan (Australia), Neil Sinyard (UK), Imogen Sara Smith (US), Tony Tracy (Ireland), Melanie Williams (UK).
Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906-1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear 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 in the world market and why the company failed to maintain this position. Written from perspective of Nordisk Film as a business and organization, from its establishment in 1906 until 1924 when founder Ole Olsen stepped back, this volume examines are the competitive advantages Nordisk Film gained in reorganizing the production to multiple-reel films around 1910; the company's highly efficient film production which anticipated the departmentalized organization of Hollywood; Nordisk Film's aggressive expansion strategy in Germany, Central-Europe and Russia during the First World War; and the grand plans for taking control of UFA in association with the American Famous Players in the post-war years.
The 100th anniversary of cinema was marked throughout the world in 1995/6. Amongst the widespread celebrations it was largely overlooked that genuine motion pictures had been commercially shown 101 years earlier, and that the origins of the film industry lay in a peepshow device rather than the more familiar movie projector. Introduced in New York in April 1894 and in Paris and London later in the same year, Thomas Edison's electrically-driven Kinetoscope was the first practical method of film exhibition. Around a thousand of these state-of-the art machines were manufactured, featuring the first brief fiction films and the earliest newsreels. Techniques such as the close-up and stop-editing were introduced and the 35mm film employed became a universal standard. Edison was able to influence the development of the device in the United States, but he soon lost control of the British and European markets. Spearheaded by two entrepreneurial Greek merchants, George Georgiades and George Tragides, a large and often colorful group of showmen began to exploit the new invention. With Edison neglecting to obtain European patents, his agents fought a losing battle to stem an influx of 'bogus' Kinetoscopes onto the market. Leading the construction of replica Kinetoscopes was a young and ambitious electrical engineer who was to become central to the development of world cinema. In his business arrangements with the Greeks Robert William Paul operated close to the limits of legality, a risk-taking attitude that also led him to enter into a partnership with the notorious fraudster and self-publicist 'Viscount' Hinton. The rush to exploit the Kinetoscope faltered when Edison refused to supply films for pirate machines, but regained momentum when Paul and the American Birt Acres constructed their own camera, shooting the first British movies in March/April 1895. The turbulent and often unlikely events of 1894-5 were a crucial prelude to the birth of British cinema.The position of the Kinetoscope in film history is central and undisputed. An indication of its importance is provided by the detailed attention American scholars have given to examining its history. However, the Kinetoscope's development in Britain has not been well documented and much current information about it is incomplete and out of date. The purpose of the book is, for the first time, to present a comprehensive account, utilizing many previously unpublished sources. The commercial and technical backgrounds of the Kinetoscope are looked at in detail; the style and content of the earliest British films analyzed; and the device's place in the wider world of Victorian popular entertainment examined. A unique legal case is revealed and a number of previously unrecorded film pioneers are identified and discussed. Each of the three authors are recognized specialists in their chosen area of early British film history, and two of them have collaborated previously in a book-length study of a Victorian film company.
In short: no more silver and more and more pixels.
In Communications Media, Globalization, and Empire, an international team of experts analyze and critique the political economy of media communications worldwide. Their analysis takes particular account of the sometimes conflicting pressures of globalization and "neo-imperialism." The first is commonly defined as the dismantling of barriers to trade and cultural exchange and responds significantly to lobbying of the world s largest corporations, including media corporations. The second concerns U.S. pursuit of national security interests as response to "terrorism," at one level and, at others, to intensifying competition among both nations and corporations for global natural resources."
Soviet Animation and the Thaw of the 1960s examines the remarkable animation that emerged during the post-Stalin period of liberalization in the Soviet Union as an avenue of expression for a new spirit of aesthetic freedom. Drawing on extensive archival research, Laura Pontieri reconstructs the dynamics inside Soviet animation studios and the relationships between the animators and the political establishment. Pontieri offers a meticulous study of Soviet animated films of the period, using the world of Soviet animation as a lens for viewing the historical moment of the thaw from a fresh and less conventional point of view.
Reflects a growing interest in animation as a medium that spans a range of films than that of cartoons for children. This book is useful for academics, researchers and students of film, television, media, art and cultural studies.
Discussing Disney has grown out of a conference of the same name, is a collection of 12 papers on topics which, though diverse in scope, all relate back to one another through their connection to Disney. As the field of Disney Studies continues to grow and evolve, those working within and contributing to it come from a range of backgrounds, including History, Myth Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies, and Musicology (to name just a few), and therefore examine the outputs of the Disney company - and the company itself - in diverse ways.Discussing Disney seeks to continue the evolution of Disney Studies as an academic field that has now evolved beyond a discourse that merely, to quote Eric Smoodin (1994), "...[sought} to complicate the notions and uses of Disney discourse that currently make their way to the general public through the popular media". Though this was an important early step in Disney Studies, as it found it necessary to justify its legitimacy within the academy, in the intervening quarter-century, Disney Studies has established itself as a field of Animation Studies (which, simultaneously, has established itself as a branch of Film and Television Studies, as well as Cultural Studies), and is now recognized widely as a valid subject of academic enquiry in its own right. Film Studies as a whole - and Disney Studies as part of that - has also evolved in such a way that it has moved forward from insisting upon an overtly political (and therefore inherently biased) stance, and has taken up a more historically-based and/or cultural studies-based, politically-neutral approach that seeks to contextualize its subject in terms of the conditions in which the company's various outputs - animated shorts and films, theme park attractions, television shows, books, music, merchandising, and the like - have been produced, as well as understanding the audience for whom these were made initially. This is not to say that the field ignores politics - far from it - but rather that it uses political history and political theory as academic basis, rather than as a position from which to debate and opine.By looking at Disney from some of its many angles - the history and the persona of its founder, a selection of its films (from the blockbuster successes to the less than successful), its approaches to animation, its branding and fandom, and the ways that it has been understood and reinterpreted within popular culture -it is hoped that Discussing Disney offers its readers (and the field of Disney Studies) a more holistic understanding of a company that is arguably one of the most important forces within culture - popular or otherwise - within (so far) the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.
Laura Leuzzi is an art historian and curator. She was Post-Doc Researcher on the AHRC funded research projects REWIND¿ Italia Artists Video in Italy in 70s and 80s and on the AHRC funded research project EWVA - European Womens Video Art in the 70s and 80s, both at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. Currently she is Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded research project Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection at DJCAD. She completed her PhD at Sapienza Universit di Roma in 2011. Leuzzi is author of articles, interviews and essays which have appeared on international peer-reviewed journals including Imago, the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Nparadoxa, MediaN, Acoustic Space and Engramma. Her research is particularly focused on the relationship between words and image in visual arts, early video art and new media. She has curated exhibitions, events and screenings at the Rome Media Art Festival (MAXXI, Rome), Video EX Festival (Walcheturm, Zurich), at Neon Festival (Dundee), CCA (Glasgow), Summerhall (Edinburgh), The Showroom (London), Threshold Space (Perth) and the Centrespace (DCA, Dundee). She co-edited with Stephen Partridge the book REWINDItalia Early Video Art in Italy (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2015). Stephen Partridge is an artist, academic researcher and the principal investigator on the AHRC funded research projects Rewind Artists Video in the 70s and 80s and REWIND¿Italia Artists Video in Italy in 70s and 80s (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee). He is Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded research projects EWVA European Womens Video Art in the 70s and 80s and Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection, both based at DJCAD. Partridge was in the landmark video shows of the 1970s including The Video Show at the Serpentine in 1975, the Installation Show at the Tate gallery in 1976, The Paris Biennale in 1977 and the Kitchen in New York in 1979. During the 1980s and 1990s, he exhibited widely and produced innovative broadcast projects for Channel 4 and the BBC ( Television Interventions and Not Necessarily). He has also curated a number of influential video shows: Video Art 78 in Coventry; UK TV, New York; National Review of Live Art, 1988-90; 19:4:90 Television Interventions; and the touring tape packages Made in Scotland I, II, Semblances, Passages. Partridge has lectured since 1975 in a number of art colleges and established the School of Television & Imaging at DJCAD. He is presently Professor of Media Art and Dean of Research Art & Design responsible for the research leadership of DJCAD, the Visual Research Centre and Exhibitions. His iconic video work, Monitor (1974) was acquired by TATE in 2015. Professor Elaine Shemilt was a pioneer of early feminist video and multi-media installation work. Doppelgnger (1979/1981) and Women Soldiers (1984), were recovered and migrated to digital by the AHRC funded research project REWIND in 2011. She went on to work mainly through the mediumof printmaking, installation and performance, addressing new scales and contexts, incorporating printed elements into installation and public works as well as embracing photographic and digital technologies. Shemilt established the Printmaking Department of the School of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (University of Dundee) in 1988 and was Course Director of Printmaking from 1988¿2001. She has been Professor of Fine Art Printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee since 2005. She is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC funded research projects EWVA European Womens Video Art in the 70s and 80s and Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection, both based at the University of Dundee. Shemilt is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Geographical Society, and she is a Shackleton Scholar. She is a Professional member of Society of Scottish Artists and was its President from March 2007¿2010. Shemilt is also the Artistic Director of the Centre for Remote Environments and she is the Vice Chair of the South Georgia Heritage Trust. She was a founder member of both organisations which are principally involved in environmental management and protection.
Emerging from the confluence of Greco-Roman mythology and regional folklore, the mermaid has been an enduring motif in Western culture since the medieval period. It has also been disseminated more widely, initially through Western trade and colonisation and, more recently, through the increasing globalisation of media products and outlets.Scaled for Success offers the first detailed overview of the mermaids dispersal outside Europe. Complementing previous studies of the interrelationship between the mermaid and Mami Wata spirit in West Africa, this volume addresses the mermaids presence in a range of Middle Eastern, Asian, Australian, Latin American and North American contexts. Individual chapters identify the manner in which the mermaid has been variously syncretised and/or resignified in contexts as diverse as Indian public statuary, Thai cinema and Coney Islands annual Mermaid Parade.Rather than lingering as a relic of a bygone age, the mermaid emerges as a versatile, dynamic and, above all, polyvalent figure. Her prominence exemplifies the manner in which contemporary media-lore has extended the currency of established folkloric figures in new and often surprising ways. Analysing aspects of religious symbolism, visual art, literature and contemporary popular culture, this copiously illustrated volume profiles an intriguing and highly diverse phenomenon.Philip Hayward is editor of the journal Shima and holds adjunct professor positions at the University of Technology Sydney and at Southern Cross University. His previous volume, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media, was published by John Libbey Publishing/Indiana University Press in 2017.
Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture offers its readers an in-depth and interdisciplinary engagement with the sea and its monstrous inhabitants; through critical readings of folklore, weird fiction, film, music, radio and digital games. Within the text there are a multitude of convergent critical perspectives used to engage and explore fictional and real monsters of the sea in media and folklore. The collection features chapters from a variety of academic perspectives; post- modernism, psychoanalysis, industrial-organisational analysis, fandom studies, sociology and philosophy are featured. Under examination are a wide range of narratives and media forms that represent, reimagine and create the Kraken, mermaids, giant sharks, sea draugrs and even the weird creatures of H.P. Lovecraft.Beasts of the Deep offers an expansive study of our sea-born fears and anxieties, that are crystallised in a variety of monstrous forms. Repeatedly the chapters in the collection encounter the contemporary relevance of our fears of the sea and its inhabitants ΓÇô through the dehumanising media depictions of refugees in the Mediterranean to the encroaching ecological disasters of global warming, pollution and the threat of mass marine extinction.
As logical as the existence and role of Public Service Broadcasters seemed to be in the era of broadcasting monopolies, it is equally natural today to question public involvement in the media. Is there still a need for public broadcasters? What are their cultural obligations, political role and remit in the dual European media market? Which changes will new media, the internet, and digital technology bring, and what impact will they have on the media market? Do the public media really make a difference, or are they dinosaurs threatened with extinction in the new and unfamiliar media landscape of modern Europe?
Amy M. Davis is author of Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Changing Representations of Women in Disney's Feature Animation, 1937-2001 (IUP, 2006) and a Lecturer in the Film Studies Department at the University of Hull.
Presents essays that address the contexts of innovation and reception that have framed the development of moving images in the last one hundred years. This work represents the best of the research in the history of the moving image, and makes a contribution to the debates concerning the impact of new media on the history of cinema.
Marco Pellitteri examines the growing influence of Japanese pop culture in European contexts in this comprehensive study of manga, anime, and video games. Looking at the period from 1975 to today, Pellitteri discusses Super Mario, Pokémon, kawaii, Sonic, robots and cyborgs, Astro Boy, and Gundam, among other examples of these popular forms. Pellitteri divides this period into two eras ("the dragon" and "the dazzle") to better understand this cultural phenomenon and means by which it achieved worldwide distribution.
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