Book

How the movies got a past : a historiography of American cinema, 1894-1930

Latsis, Dimitrios, author

Overview

\"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.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Motion pictures United States History 20th century. / Motion pictures United States Historiography.
• ISBN: 9780197689271

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PN1993.5.U6 LAT	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE