Tracing the Australasian Asta Nielsen Boom in Trove and Papers Past: a tool for recreating the circulation histories of silent films

Abstract

ABSTRACT The circulation of early films was highly ephemeral, since films were regarded as consumable, interchangeable objects. Their rapid passage through cinemas, staying for just a few days or weeks, left few traces that can be used to document their movement a century later. Even in the case of films featuring a phenomenally successful star like the Danish actress Asta Nielsen in the burgeoning early cinema market of Australia and New Zealand (known collectively as Australasia or the Antipodes), few records of silent-era distribution or exhibition companies have survived to reveal which Asta Nielsen films they may have imported and screened, let alone what audiences thought of the films they were able to view. Fortunately, the open-access digitization of extensive archival newspaper holdings in New Zealand (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz) and Australia (trove.nla.gov.au) has made it possible to recreate much of the circulation history of many early films, thereby indicating their popularity and relative profitability. Such archival material confirms that Asta Nielsen was a well-known, highly valued star in the Australasian cinema firmament, with nearly two dozen films in circulation over a four-year period preceding the First World War. This article demonstrates how Trove and Papers Past can be used to follow the movement of the Asta Nielsen film When the Mask Falls/Wenn die Maske fällt (1912) through Australasia, contextualize it as part of a much larger phenomenon of Asta Nielsen films in the Antipodes, and situate it within the larger context of Australasian cinema exhibition and distribution in the pre-First World War era.