| Contents |
Introduction : the evolving practice of film historiography -- A vivisection : writing the history of an emergent medium -- The first canonical histories : Ramsaye, Rotha and beyond -- Finding its voice? Sound and the (re)-writing of film history -- Through a glass darkly : early nonfiction films about the history of cinema -- Programming the classics : revivals, the little theater movement and the emergence of a canon -- The future-past of moving images : towards a pre-history of film archiving -- Exhibitions and museums : the past of cinema on display -- Invented traditions : commemorations and anniversaries -- Learning and earning : film history enters the university curriculum. |
| Abstract |
"This book 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 film as a technology, art and form of amusement, from its inception up to 1930. This first historiography of American movies creates 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 fragments 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"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-383) and index. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| LCCN | 2023011406 |
| ISBN | 9780197689271 (hardback) |
| ISBN | (epub) |
