New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences

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In this book, editors Mario Slugan and Danil Biltereyst present a theoretical reconceptualization of early cinema. To do so, they highlight the latest methods and tools for analysis, and cast new light on the experience of early cinema through the application of these concepts and methods. The international host of contributors evaluate examples of early cinema across the globe, including The May Irwin Kiss (1896), Un homme de ttes (1900), The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904) and Tom Tom the Pipers Son (1905). In doing so, they address the periodization of the era, emphasizing the recent boon in the availability of primary materials, the rise of digital technologies, the developments in new cinema history, and the persistence of some conceptualizations as key incentives for rethinking early cinema in theoretical and methodological terms. They go on to highlight cutting-edge approaches to the study of early cinema, including the use of the Mediathread Platform, the formation of new datasets with the help of digital technologies, and exploring the early era in non-western cultures. Finally, the contributors revisit early cinema audiences and exhibition contexts by investigating some of the earliest screenings in Denmark and the US, exploring the details of black cinema going in Harlem, and examining exhibition practices in Germany.

Reviews

This outstanding collection, expertly curated by the editors, interrogates the current state of early cinema study by re-examining how we have come to understand this complex phenomenon and suggesting what more there is to learn. Adopting distinct approaches, uncovering novel sources, and providing exciting scholarly discoveries, New Perspectives on Early Cinema History more than fulfills the promise of its title. -- Charlie Keil, University of Toronto, Canada
Fifty years ago, studying the first decades of film claimed a special place in the wider history of cinema. Since then, it has become one of the liveliest and most productive areas for theorising not only old but increasingly also new media, as this welcome collection of new studies demonstrates. -- Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
New Perspectives on Early Cinema History breaks new ground in the study of early cinema by offering theoretical reconceptualizations that showcase the latest methods and tools for analysis and cast new light on early cinema audiences in different regions of the world. * Film History: An International Journal, Volume 34, Number 4, 2022, pp. 126-134 (Article) *
We could say that Slugan and Biltereysts collection embodies the encounter of early film history with new cinema history or maybe the transmutation of the former into the latter, as its line-up smoothly moves from Gaudreault, who contributed to all the new film history anthologies cited above, to Biltereyst, well-known for his involvement in new cinema history projects (not least as co-editor of similar collections). Emerging, in the middle, is a new generation of scholars mostly coming from continental Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Russia). What the book proposes, in sum, are new cinema history perspectives on early cinema history. -- Sofia Sampaio, Instituto de Cincias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2023 Vol. 43, No. 2, 619643 *

Author Bio

Mario Slugan is Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK. He is the author of Montage as Perceptual Experience (2017), Nol Carroll on Film (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2019). He is also the editor of the open-access peer-reviewed academic journal Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe and book review editor for Early Popular Visual Culture. Danil Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at Ghent University, Belgium. He is editor of Mapping Movie Magazines (2020) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to New Cinema Audiences (2019), Moralizing Cinema (2015), Silencing Cinema (2013), Cinema, Audiences and Modernity (2012) and Explorations in New Cinema History (2011).