Film museum practice and film historiography

Film museum practice and film historiography

Author: Bregt Lameris

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2017-07-07

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 9048526744

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This book is an elaborate study of the interrelationships between film historical discourse and archival practices, such as the collecting, restoration and exhibition of films. It delineates how film historiographical discourses always leave traces in the film archive, and vice versa. The book investigates and analyzes the history of three important collections from the archive of EYE Film Museum: the Uitkijk-collection, the Desmet-collection, and Dutch silent films. The histories of these collections have different connections to film historiography, and as such allow us to investigate these interrelationships from various perspectives. It shows how archival films and collections always carry the historical traces of selection policies, restoration philosophies, and exhibition strategies. As such the book aims to demonstrate how film archives cannot be innocent or neutral sources of film history. In addition, it shows that current EYE Film Museum activities semi-automatically refer to this history of which the archive carries the material traces.


An International Study of Film Museums

An International Study of Film Museums

Author: Rinella Cere

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-29

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1000317528

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An International Study of Film Museums examines how cinema has been transformed and strengthened through museological and archival activities since its origins and asks what paradoxes may be involved, if any, in putting cinema into a museum. Cere explores the ideas that were first proposed during the first half of the twentieth century around the need to establish national museums of cinema and how these have been adapted in the subsequent development of the five case studies presented here: four in Europe and one in the USA. The book traces the history of the five museums' foundation, exhibitions, collections, and festivals organised under their aegis and it asks how they resolve the tensions between cinema as an aesthetic artefact – now officially recognised as part of humanity's cultural heritage – and cinema as an entertainment and leisure activity. It also gives an account of recent developments around unifying collections, exhibition activities and archives in one national film centre that offers the general public a space totally devoted to film and cinematographic culture. An International Study of Film Museums provides a unique comparative study of museums of cinema in varying national contexts. The book will be of interest to academics and students around the world who are engaged in the study of museums, archives, heritage, film, history and visual culture.


Cinemagritte

Cinemagritte

Author: Lucy Fischer

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2019-11-25

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0814346383

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Examines the fascinating ties between Surrealist artist René Magritte and the cinema. Cinemagritte: René Magritte within the Frame of Film History, Theory, and Practice investigates the dynamic relationship between the Surrealist modernist artist René Magritte (1898–1967) and the cinema—a topic largely ignored in the annals of film and art criticism. Magritte once said that he used cinema as "a trampoline for the imagination," but here author Lucy Fischer reverses that process by using Magritte's work as a stimulus for an imaginative examination of film. While Fischer considers direct influences of film on Magritte and Magritte on film, she concentrates primarily on "resonances" of Magritte's work in international cinema—both fiction and documentary, mainstream and experimental. These resonances exist for several reasons. First, Magritte was a lover of cinema and created works as homages to the medium, such as Blue Cinema (1925), which immortalized his childhood movie theater. Second, Magritte's style, though dependent on bizarre juxtapositions, was characterized by surface realism—which ties it to the nature of the photographic and cinematic image. Third, Magritte shares with film a focus on certain significant concepts: the frame, voyeurism, illusionism, the relation between word and image, the face, montage, variable scale, and flexible point of view. Additionally, the volume explores art documentaries concerning Magritte as well as the artist's whimsical amateur "home movies," made with his wife, Georgette, friends, and Belgian Surrealist associates. The monograph is richly illustrated with images of Magritte's oeuvre as well as film stills from such diverse works as The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Eyes Without a Face, American Splendor, The Blood of a Poet, Zorns Lemma, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Draughtsman's Contract, and many more. Cinemagritte brings a novel and creative approach to the work of Magritte and both film and art criticism. Students, scholars, and fans of art history and film will enjoy this thoughtful marriage of the two.


Changes in Museum Practice

Changes in Museum Practice

Author: Hanne-Lovise Skartveit

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781845456108

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"By examining the ways in which museums involve refugees and asylum seekers, Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation explores the opportunities around new media. Leading artists, curators, and academics come together to outline different degrees of participation by audiences and communities and explore a range of topics from video games to theatre, from photography to participatory video and digital storytelling. Case studies are used throughout to highlight the unique ways that various approaches to inclusion and participation can be used successfully." --Book Jacket.


Making the invisible visible

Making the invisible visible

Author: Ingrid Stigsdotter

Publisher: Nordic Academic Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 9188909050

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As film stars, actresses have contributed to the film industry's glamorous surface. To talk about women in film as invisible may thus seem odd. This book, however, is concerned with the paradox that on the other side of the camera, women are clearly underrepresented. This is true of contemporary film culture, and has been true historically, despite significant variations between countries/geographical areas, historical time periods and different roles/professions in film production, distribution and exhibition. Considering women's gradually increasing participation in the paid workforce during the 20th century, women's representation in film work might also be expected to increase gradually from the beginning of cinema and onwards. However, as the Women Film Pioneers Project has suggested, the number of women who at all levels inside and outside the Hollywood film industry was greater in first two decades of cinema than at any time since. This may partly reflect the fact that it was easier for women to enter the film industry in an early, experimental phase, before it had become apparent how lucrative the medium of film could be. Nevertheless there is arguably a need to extend the attention on women's contributions to film history beyond the silent era, making visible what has been absent in traditional film history books, and reclaim women's agency in a wider film historical perspective. This anthology represents a step in this direction. The articles included in the book deal with women's agency in a wide range of roles, in film production, exhibition and criticism, but also with new perspectives on stars/actresses and their agency, and extending focus to include LGBT and queer identities. We pay particular attention to the challenges and opportunities that digitization offers for projects of this kind, including a wider range of methods, subjects and themes.


Visualizing Film History

Visualizing Film History

Author: Christian Gosvig Olesen

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2025-01-07

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0253071852

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Though many archival digital objects were not "born digital," film archives are now becoming important resources for digital scholarship as a consequence of digitization. Moreover, with advancements in digital research methods involving video annotation, visual analysis, and GIS affecting the way we look at archival films' material, stylistic histories and circulation, new research practices are more important than ever. Visualizing Film History is an accessible introduction to archive-based digital scholarship in film and media studies and beyond. With a combined focus on the history of film historiography, archiving, and recent digital scholarship—covering a period from the "first wave" of film archiving in the early 1900s to recent data art—this book proposes ways to work critically with digitized archives and research methods. Christian Olesen encourages a shift towards new critical practices in the field with an in-depth assessment of and critical approach to doing film historiography with the latest digital tools and digitized archives. Olesen argues that if students, scholars and archivists are to fully realize the potential of emerging digital tools and methodologies, they must critically consider the roles that data analysis, visualization, interfaces and procedural human-machinery interactions play in producing knowledge in current film historical research. If we fail to do so, we risk losing our ability to critically navigate and renew contemporary research practices and evaluate the results of digital scholarship.


Museum as a Cinematic Space

Museum as a Cinematic Space

Author: Elisa Mandelli

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-06-24

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1474416802

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With an innovative and strongly interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book offers an extensive investigation of the use of audio-visuals in exhibition design.


Silent Cinema

Silent Cinema

Author: Paolo Cherchi Usai

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-04-04

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1911239139

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Paolo Cherchi Usai provides a comprehensive introduction to the study, research and preservation of silent cinema from its heyday in the early 20th century to its present day flourishing. He traces the history of the moving image in its formative years, from Edison's and Lumière's first experiments to the dawn of 'talkies'; provides a clear guide to the basics of silent film technology; introduces the technical and creative roles involved in its production, and presents silent cinema as a performance event, rather than a passive viewing experience. This new, greatly expanded edition takes the reader on a new journey, exploring silent cinema in the broader context of technology, culture, and society, from the invention of celluloid film and its related machinery to film studios, laboratories, theatres and audiences. Among the people involved in the creation of a new art form were filmmakers, actors and writers, but also engineers, entrepreneurs, and projectionists. Their collective efforts, and the struggle to preserve their creative work by archives and museums, are interwoven in a compelling story covering three centuries of media history, from the magic lantern to the reinvention of silent cinema in digital form. The new edition also includes comprehensive resource information for the study, research, preservation and exhibition of silent cinema.


Provenance and Early Cinema

Provenance and Early Cinema

Author: Joanne Bernardi

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0253053005

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Remnants of early films often have a story to tell. As material artifacts, these film fragments are central to cinema history, perhaps more than ever in our digital age of easy copying and sharing. If a digital copy is previewed before preservation or is shared with a researcher outside the purview of a film archive, knowledge about how the artifact was collected, circulated, and repurposed threatens to become obscured. When the question of origin is overlooked, the story can be lost. Concerned contributors in Provenance and Early Cinema challenge scholars digging through film archives to ask, "How did these moving images get here for me to see them?" This volume, which features the conference proceedings from Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, 2018, questions preservation, attribution, and patterns of reuse in order to explore singular artifacts with long and circuitous lives.


Film History as Media Archaeology

Film History as Media Archaeology

Author: Thomas Elsaesser

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 9048529964

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Since cinema has entered the digital era, its very nature has come under renewed scrutiny. Countering the 'death of cinema' debate, Film History as Media Archaeology presents a robust argument for the cinema's current status as a new epistemological object, of interest to philosophers, while also examining the presence of moving images in the museum and art spaces as a challenge for art history. The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'. It joins the efforts of other media scholars to locate cinema's historical emergence and subsequent transformations within the broader field of media change and interaction, as we experience them today.