EARLY CINEMA AND THE "NATIONAL" by Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, Rob King ( 9780861966899 )

Item Details

Title:

EARLY CINEMA AND THE "NATIONAL"

By:

Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, Rob King

Format:

Book

List price:	£24.99
We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for further information.

ISBN 10:

0861966899

ISBN 13:

9780861966899

Publisher:

JOHN LIBBEY & CO

Pub. date:

15 October, 2008

Series:

Early Cinema in Review: Proceedings of Domitor

Pages:

104

Synopsis:

When, where, and how did motion pictures become a national phenomenon or part and parcel of a national culture? What conceptions of nation were bound up with early cinema? Is early cinema best understood in global or transnational terms? While many studies have been written on national cinemas, "Early Cinema and the "National"" is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices (both local and global), and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated, landmark anthology are all devoted to rethinking the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. As many of the thirty-four contributors show, concepts of national identity played a role in establishing many of the parameters of cinema's early development, from technological change to discourses of stardom, from emerging genres to inter-titling practices.Yet, as others attest, national meanings could often become knotty in other contexts, when concepts of nationhood were contested in relation to colonial/imperial histories and regional configurations. The relationship between cinema and the concept of nation has been challenged by multi-national capitalism, and Early Cinema and the "National" takes stock of an earlier moment in cinema history, tracing the beginnings of the process whereby nations learned to imagine themselves through moving images. The contributors to this book include: Jonathan Auerbach; Jennifer Bean; Marta Braun; Ian Christie; Frank Gray; Tom Gunning; Charlie Keil; Frank Kessler; David Mayer; Dominique Nasta; Panivong Norindr; Charles O'Brien; and, Greg Waller. Richard Abel is Robert Altman Collegiate Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Screen Arts & Culture at the University of Michigan. Most recently he edited the award-winning "Encyclopedia of Early Cinema" (Routledge 2005), published "Americanizing the Movies and 'Movie-Mad' Audiences, 1910-1914" (California 2006), and co-organized the Ninth International Domitor Conference at the University of Michigan (2006).His current project is "Menus for Movie Land: Newspapers and the Movies, 1911-1915". Giorgio Bertellini is Assistant Professor in the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures and Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Editor of "The Cinema of Italy" (2004) and "Silent Italian Cinema: A Reader" (2008), he is the author of the monograph "Emir Kusturica" (1996), numerous essays on silent film culture in Europe and the USA, and a forthcoming study on race as a visual form entitled "Characters of the Picturesque: Atlantic Racial Geography, Italians, and Early Cinema". Rob King is assistant professor in the Cinema Studies Program and Department of History at the University of Toronto, where he is completing "The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture" (University of California Press, forthcoming 2008). He has published articles on silent cinema and early film comedy in "Cinema Journal", "Velvet Light Trap and Film History".

Publication:

Australia

Imprint:

John Libbey Cinema and Animation

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

A2 CHEMISTRY

A2 CHEMISTRY (PB)