Performing New Media, 1890-1915

by Kaveh Askari (Editor), Scott Curtis (Editor), Frank Gray (Editor), Louis Pelletier (Editor), Tami Williams (Editor), Joshua Yumibe (Editor)

Overview

In the years before the First World War, showmen, entrepreneurs, educators, and scientists used magic lanterns and cinematographs in many contexts and many venues. To employ these silent screen technologies to deliver diverse and complex programs usually demanded audio accompaniment, creating a performance of both sound and image. These shows might include live music, song, lectures, narration, and synchronized sound effects provided by any available party—projectionist, local talent, accompanist or backstage crew—and would often borrow techniques from shadow plays and tableaux vivants. The performances were not immune to the influence of social and cultural forces, such as censorship or reform movements. This collection of essays considers the ways in which different visual practices carried out at the turn of the 20th century shaped performances on and beside the screen.

Indiana University Press

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780861967148
Publisher:	John Libbey Publishing
Publication date:	05/29/2014
Series:	Early Cinema in Review Series
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Kaveh Askari is Associate Professor in the English Department at Western Washington University.

Scott Curtis Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is currently President of Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema.

Frank Gray is Director of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton.

Louis Pelletier is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Université de Montréal and Concordia University where he is research coordinator of the Canadian Educational, Sponsored, and Industrial Film Archive project.

Tami Williams is Associate Professor of Film Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Joshua Yumibe is Director and Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Michigan State University. He holds a joint appointment as Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews.

Indiana University Press

Table of Contents

Introduction, Kaveh Askari, Scott Curtis, Frank Gray, Louis Pelletier, Tami Williams, and Joshua Yumibe
Part I, Performing on the Screen: Actors and Personalities
1. Louis Weber at Rex: Performing Femininity Across Media, Shelley Stamp
2. Diva Intermedial: Lyda Borelli between Art, Photography, Theatre, and Cinema, Ivo Blom
3. Why Sue ‘Little Mary?’: How Independent Moving Pictures Company of America v Gladys Smith and Owen Moore (1911) Defined Celebrity and Professionalism for Film Actors, Leslie Midkiff DeBauche
4. Camera Distance and Acting in Griffith Biographs, Charles O’ Brien
5. Performance Times: The Lightning Cartoon and the Emergence of Animation, Malcolm Cook
6. La transparence du Fregoligraph en question, Frédéric Tabet
7. In the Flesh: Personal Appearances and the Picture Personality in Britain, Chris O’Rourke
8. Performers—New Synchronized on Screen, Ian Christie
Part II, Performing Beside the Screen: Narrators, Showmen, and Musicians
9. Missing Believed Post: The Film Narrator, Then and Now, Martin Loiperdinger
10. Standards of Practice in Transition: The Showmanship of Jasper Redfern as It Emerged, Peter Walsh
11. Showmanship Skills and the Changing Role of the Exhibitor in 1910s Scotland, María Antonia Vélez-Serna
12. Showing Film in Winter (1904-1906): Albert Frères’ Film Galas in Dutch Multipurpose Buildings, Ansje van Beusekom
13. Performing New Media and the Creation of National Identity: Kräusslich and Köpke in Norway before 1910, Gunnar Iversen
14. Music Programming and the Formation of Swedish Cinema Culture, Christopher Natzén
15. ‘Marvelous and Fascinating’: L. Frank Baum’s Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908), Artemis Willis
16. The Multiple-Media Lecture: Racing with Death in Antarctic Blizzard (1915), Greg Waller
Part III, Performing with the Screen: Audiences, Educators, and Officials
17. Kinoreformbewegung Revisited: Performing the Cinematograph as a Pedagogical Tool, Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk
18. Health on Display: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition as Sanitary Venue, Marina Dahlquist
19. Lyrical Education: Music and Colour in Early Nonfiction Film, Jennifer Peterson
20. ‘Offensive and Riotous Behavior’? Performing the Role of an Audience in Irish Cinema of the mid-1910s, Denis Condon
21. Tango Mad and Affected by Cinematographitis: Rhythmic ‘Contagions’ between Screen and Audiences in the 1910s, Kristina Köhler
Part IV, Intermedial Performance
22. Screening Sensations and Live Performance: the Creative Blending of the Traditional and New Projected Media at the Start of the Twentieth Century, Ludwig Maria Vogl-Bienek
23. Le spectacle de lantern magique considéré sous l’angle de la conference: quelques traces écrites d’une performance orale, Alain Boillet
24. Getting to Know the Dutch: Magic Lantern Slides as Traces of Intermedial Performance Practices, Sarah Dellmann
25. 20 Minutes or Less: Short-Form Film-and-Theatre Hybrids: Skits Sketches, Playlets and Acts in Vaudeville, Variety, Revues, etc., Gwendolyn Waltz
26. Between Karagöz and Cinema: Connectivity, Mobility, Collectivity, Canan Balan
27. Entre nouveauté et continuité: Le Spectacle cinématographique serait-il une émergence des ombres françaises?, Thierry Lecointe
28. ‘Performed live and talking. No Kinematograph.’ Amateur Performances of Tableaux Vivants and Local Film Exhibition in Germany around 1900, Daniel Wiegand
29. Performing Painting: Projected Images as Living Pictures, Valentine Robert
30. Colour as Performance in Visual Music, Film Tinting, and Digital Painting, Joshua Yumibe
Coda
31. Early Cinema Today and its ‘Digital Performance’: The Rediscovery of the Soldier’s Courtship (1896), Franziska Heller
Editors and Contributors
Index of Films
Index of Names

Indiana University Press