Early Cinema and the "National"

Description

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. Contents Introduction • Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King Part I: Interrogating the “National” 1 Early cinema as global cinema: the encyclopedic ambition • Tom Gunning 2 Nationalizing attractions • Jonathan Auerbach 3 Images of the “National” in early non-fiction films • Frank Kessler 4 National and racial landscapes and the photographic form • Giorgio Bertellini 5 Sound-on-disc cinema and electrification in pre-WWI Britain, France, Germany and the United States • Charles O’Brien 6 Mind-reading/mind-speaking: dialogue in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and the emergence of speech in American silent cinema • Torey Liepa 7 Living Canada: selling the nation through images • Marta Braun and Charlie Keil 8 Early cinema and “the Polish question” • Sheila Skaff Part II: Colonialism/Imperialism 9 Our Navy and patriotic entertainment in Brighton at the start of the Boer War • Frank Gray 10 “An England of our Dreams”?: early patriotic entertainments with film in Britain during the Anglo-Boer War • Ian Christie 11 “The transport of audiences”: making cinema “National” • Nico de Klerk 12 Enlisting early cinema in the service of “la plus grande France” • Panivong Norindr 13 Teaching citizenship via celluloid • Marina Dahlquist 14 Fights of Nations and national fights • David Mayer 15 Japan on American screens, 1908–1915 • Gregory A. Waller Part III: Locating/Relocating the “National” in Film Exhibition 16 Nationalist film-going without Canadian-made films? • Paul S. Moore 17 The cinema arrives in Italy: city, region and nation in early film discourse • John Welle 18 Wondrous pictures in Istanbul: from cosmopolitanism to nationalism • Canan Balan 19 The emergence of nationally specific film cultures in Europe, 1911–1914 • Joseph Garncarz 20 The Norwegian municipal cinema system and the development of a national cinema • Gunnar Iversen 21 Spanish lecturers and their relations with the national • Daniel Sánchaz Salas 22 Joseph Dumais and the language of French-Canadian silent cinema • Germain Lacasse 23 Localizing serials: translating daily life in Les Mystères de New-York (1915) • Rudmer Canjels Part IV: Genre and the ‘National’ 24 Seeing the world while staying at home: slapstick, modernity and American-ness • Amanda Keeler 25 “A purely American product”: tramp comedy and white working-class formation in the 1910s • Rob King 26 The “Chinese” conjurer: orientalist magic in variety theater and the trick film • Matthew Solomon 27 A note on the national character of early popular science films • Oliver Gaycken 28 European melodramas and World War I: narrated time and historical time as reflections of national identity • Dominique Nasta and Muriel Andrin 29 “Cow-punchers, bull-whackers and tin horn gamblers”: generic formulae, sensational literature, and early American cinema • W.D. Phillips 30 Early ethnographic film and the museum • Wolfgang Fuhrmann Part V: Gender and the ‘National’ 31 Black hair, black eyes, black heart: Theda Bara and race suicide panic • Mark Hain 32 Who is the “right” star to adore?: nationality, masculinity and the female cinema audience in Germany during World War I • Andrea Haller Part VI: Memory, Imagination, and the ‘National’ 33 From Switzerland to Italy and all around the world: the Joseph Joye and Davide Turconi collections • Joshua Yumibe 34 The imagination of early Hollywood: movie-land and the magic cities, 1914–1916 • Jennifer M. Bean Editors and contributors Index