{"title":"Another Form of Life: Science-Fiction Marketing and The Blob (1958)","authors":"J. P. Telotte","doi":"10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This essay considers how marketing for The Blob (1958) responded to what Variety in the later 1950s termed an \"erratic\" market for science fiction. While the genre was highly popular early in the decade, by the late 1950s large studios were either abandoning science fiction or releasing cheap independent productions. Facing this situation, Paramount turned The Blob into a much-discussed success largely because of the way it framed its potential audience, not simply aiming at a youth demographic, but positioning that audience as highly aware of the exploitation that usually surrounded the film industry's treatment of both the genre and the youth market.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124062464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anthony Fiala: The First Films of the Polar Regions, 1901–1905","authors":"H. Siebel","doi":"10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Explorer and artist Anthony Fiala successfully shot the first motion pictures in the polar regions between 1901 and 1905. The footage, however, was not edited and distributed as a film until 1909 when Kineto Ltd., London, released A Dash for the North Pole. This essay repositions Fiala as a pioneer in arctic filmmaking by examining the circumstances that delayed the film's production and distribution and caused the material to be misdated in archives.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131390195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cinema's \"Miracles\": Film Tricks and the Production of Soviet Wonder","authors":"Moss","doi":"10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.02","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article investigates the treatment of cinematic special effects or kinotriuki (film tricks) in Soviet cinema of the 1930s, focusing on the film The New Gulliver (1935), an adaptation of Gulliver's Travels by director Alexander Ptushko that used cutting-edge techniques to combine live action and stop-motion animation. It argues that film tricks in both fantastic and dramatic genres of Soviet cinema served to generate a form of wonder akin to that inspired by the religious miracle, but transferred to the miraculous feats of the party-state, with implications for the comparative study of special effects and cinematic experience.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"130 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131651207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Design, Creativity, and Technology: The Khudozhnik in Russian Cinema of the Silent Era","authors":"E. Rees","doi":"10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/FILMHISTORY.32.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article draws on archival sources, filmmakers' memoirs, and the Russian cinema press to examine how the roles and working practices of khudozhniki (set designers) evolved in late Imperial and early Soviet cinema in the silent era against the context of the increasing professionalization of the film industry and its nationalization from a private to a state enterprise in 1919. It provides a typological account of khudozhniki, assessing the conventions that were common among them rather than circumstances that were specific to individuals. In its focus on set design as a practice, this article seeks to demonstrate how available technology, the studio environment, and professional partnerships, as much as the creative visions of individuals, shaped the evolution of film aesthetics and influenced contemporary understandings of cinema's artistic and ideological potential.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131419389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"A Cunning and Altogether Modern Master of Men\": The Pursuing Woman in 1910s Feature Comedy","authors":"Megan E. Boyd","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article defines the pursuing woman plot in romantic comedies and traces how this narrative trope developed in American silent cinema. Though scholars characterize the women in later screwball comedies as uniquely progressive for dominating their courtships with men, this assertive heroine first flourished in the 1910s as part of a larger industry effort to craft feature-length comedies for female viewers. As the film industry increasingly relied upon romantic comedies for feature-length humor, depictions of sexually aggressive women shifted from grotesque inconveniences to modern role models. The films' reliance upon changing dating practices complicates notions of silent situation comedies' genteel humor.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121974222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visible Legacies of Invisible Resources: Gas Infrastructure, Women, and Environmental Control in 1930s British Documentary Movement Films","authors":"Joni Hayward Marcum","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Three short British documentary movement films produced for the British gas industry, Housing Problems (1935), The Smoke Menace (1937), and The Obedient Flame (1939), highlight the importance of switching to gas use in homes. These films advertise efficient, quiet, and invisible gas as a solution to social and environmental ills. The regulation of this resource, and thus the onus of environmental regulation, falls primarily into the hands of women. The films grant agency to both energy infrastructure and its human mediators while stressing their need to operate unseen.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126120803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rothacker Film: \"Largest and Best Laboratory in America\"?","authors":"Richard Abel","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Watterson Rothacker (1885–1960) probably is best known as both the pioneering maker of industrial and advertising films in the early 1910s and the producer of The Lost World (1925). Between 1917 and 1924, however, with large factories in Chicago and Los Angeles, he also was a major industry leader in developing negatives and manufacturing positive film stock for many Hollywood features. By analyzing the little-known output of Rothacker Manufacturing, especially for First National, this essay seeks to explain how Rothacker's company became the \"largest and best laboratory in America\" and to argue for the significance of the film laboratory as a long-ignored, essential component of the industry's infrastructure.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"42 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126137187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Useful Video in the Art Museum: Museum Education in Chicago and the Videos of Andrea Fraser","authors":"Zachary Vanes","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Federal funding increases under the Kennedy-Johnson administration allowed art museums to produce videos that were intended to provide a useful experience to museum visitors. Educators at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago drew from experience with film and slides while creating video presentation spaces. At the same time, reliance on public funding left useful video open to negative economic impacts during the 1980s and 1990s. Andrea Fraser's Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989) and Inaugural Speech (1997) appropriate institutional video to critique the paternalistic legacy of educational media and the corporatization of museums.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116659444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Film Poster and Song Booklet for Zerqa (1969)","authors":"Petiwala","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.32.3.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.32.3.11","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In recent years, the film poster has taken center stage in South Asian cinema studies and in the contemporary nostalgia-driven popular imagination. In analyzing Lollywood film Zerqa's (1969) song booklet and its art direction, this commentary reveals the merits of deliberating upon other mass-produced cinematic ephemera—especially publicity materials—in conjunction with or in the absence of the film text.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124932379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnography and Archives of Gulf-Kerala Diasporic Media: Television Show Publicity Poster and Airport Signage","authors":"D. S. Mini","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.32.3.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.32.3.13","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:How do we define ethnographic objects in media research, and what role do they play in anchoring the process of fieldwork? These two images,—one authorized and one requiring special permission—collected during fieldwork in India and the United Arab Emirates, show how the exchange of media objects and infrastructures between South Asia and the Middle Eastern Gulf are frequently mediated through the regional space of Kerala. Emerging from explorations of the transit zones created through diasporic media practices, this reflective piece situates a television publicity poster and an instance of airport signage within a praxis of media ethnography.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133644322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}