Search

The article discusses the emergence of the Italian cinema literature between 1907-1920. This article also focuses on film writing in Italy and analyzes the development of film thought including the discourses, critical interventions and early aesthetic or theoretical reflections on the cinema. It also adds that during those times, Italy would produce no fewer than 90 film journals, many of which lived a rather brief life. These journals are also said to be oriented toward literary and cultural developments and boasted attractive design formats.

From 1954 to 1956, tens of thousands of still photographs were taken, reviewed, printed, and circulated to promote Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). By tracing the conflicts that emerged over their management, this study centers the photographs and their distribution within an ecosystem of public relations, print media, and film production. While studio photographers produced the bulk of the photographs, their role was overshadowed by celebrity photographers, including Yousuf Karsh and Yul Brynner. Changes in the visual media landscape and Hollywood's photographic infrastructure threatened both the still photographers and the ability of studio publicists to shape the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the first two years of operation of Marc Ferrez & Filhos (Marc Ferrez & Sons), a pioneer of film distribution in Brazil. As exclusive representative of French Pathé Frères in the country, the company oversaw the expansion of permanent movie theaters in Rio de Janeiro starting in 1907, created a national distribution network, and shaped the budding film market in Brazil. The paper shows that the increase in domestic film production after 1908, the so-called belle époque of Brazilian cinema, resulted from Marc Ferrez & Filhos’ dominance in programming at the best movie theaters in the capital of Brazil using their own original and exclusive representation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Kuleshov effect is often cited as fundamental to the cinematic vocabulary, our understanding of the genesis and evolution of its narrative is incomplete. This paper aims to shed light on the evolution and plasticity of Kuleshov's early accounts of the experiment as well as the interweaving and contradictory trails that shaped the cultural understanding of the Kuleshov effect in Europe, the US, and the USSR through Kuleshov's and Pudovkin's writings. Finally, it will examine how this has contributed to an ongoing narrative within film theory and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the exhibition and reception of Kinemacolor in Russia from 1910 to 1916. Kinemacolor was a British method of filming and projecting in natural color invented by George Albert Smith and financed by Charles Urban, a US-born entrepreneur; film historians generally regard it as the most commercially viable color process before the outbreak of war in 1914. The article investigates Urban's interest in Russia as a potential market for Kinemacolor and as a source of interesting filmic material. In addition to identifying the extent of Kinemacolor's exhibition and distribution in Russia between 1910 and 1916, it also examines the Russian subjects filmed by Urban's companies in black and white and color, and identifies two occasions (1909 and 1913) on which Tsar Nikolai II and Tsarina Aleksandra Fedorovna were filmed in Kinemacolor. The article argues that the reception of Kinemacolor was widespread and diverse, and included members of the Russian imperial family and the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin. It references the specialist film-trade press in Britain, Russia, Europe, and North America; theater listings in Britain and Russia; and contemporary reports on Kinemacolor exhibitions in the British and Russian media. The article also draws upon the extensive archive of Urban's private papers, which is currently preserved in Bradford's National Science and Media Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Natural colour' was the term coined for genuine colour photography to separate it from colouring or 'painting' monochrome images, hence the use of the contrasting term 'unnatural'. The intention of this paper is to provide a guide to the technical literature on the subject. It reviews where the technologies originated, the principle literature of the time, and later, that describes the 'recipes', techniques and chemistry, summarizing the image dyes themselves in a database. Additional content is provided from associated technologies such as the subsequent use of the same techniques for natural colour, analogue coloured film restoration techniques, and an excursion into the technological cul-de-sac of Sonochrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Levy, manager of Harlem's Lafayette Players, founded Reol Productions in 1921. One of the earliest race film producers, Reol attempted to differentiate itself in this market by specializing in 'high class' productions featuring well-known actors from the Lafayette company and adaptations of work by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Wallace Johnson, and other noted race authors. The paper focuses on Levy's medial position as a Jewish entrepreneur operating in an African American market, with particular attention to "The Call of His People" (1921), Levy's adaptation of Aubrey Bowser's narrative, "The Man Who Would Be White." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the example of Iris Barry's film criticism, the author underlines the significant role that women played in articulating serious film culture. Barry's writing, argues Wasson, comprises a method by which to understand the ways in which gender has figured historically in questions of identifying and valuing a range of women's work and forms of cultural production that exist outside of filmmaking per se, yet nonetheless shape ideas undergirding the meaning and significance of specific films, and of cinema in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the importance of fiction tie-ins and narrative intelligibility in the film industry of the U.S. Tie-ins provide scholars with better traces of lost films and relate great deals on the plot and themes of movies. Films have received novel publicity as tie-ins appeared in major newspapers and popular magazines. Fiction tie-ins are not considered as a simple innovative mode of publicity used by film makers and spectators in comprehensing narrative stories. It is also the first major example of mega-publicity strategy that will characterize the Hollywood system.

The article discusses the mode of film production in the early film industry of the U.S. The Hollywood mode of production has two aspects in which one emphasizes the continuity script as a paper record, which helps producers in forecasting the costs and control of their filmmaking, while the other one centers on the recognition of continuity script as the influential factor in establishing a detailed division of labor in film studios. Accordingly, the approach used by Hollywood in filmmaking has made a small impact on the standardization of style in other countries, particularly in France, Soviet Union and Germany.

The HUAC investigations of Hollywood in 1947 are credited with having had several effects. One of those is that films deemed "suspicious" by the committee were rejected by filmgoers--they lost at the box office or were pulled from circulation. Yet, RKO's CROSSFIRE (1947) does not fit this hypothesis. Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk, producer and director of the film, were prominent as unfriendly witnesses before the committee and became part of the Hollywood Ten. Their film was released just three months before the hearings started, yet it was successful at the box office and seemed unaffected by the insinuations of its "Communist" nature. This paper argues that the film succeeded for several reasons, especially due to a well-planned campaign that sold an admittedly controversial film to the public and the film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To find the origins of today's conglomerate-dominated industry, we need to look further back in history than the corporate takeovers of the 1960s. This trend began in the years following World War II and was stimulated by the separation of exhibition from production and distribution. The leader in this trend was Paramount Pictures. Paramount sought to take advantage of changing economic conditions, rather than clinging to outmoded operating procedures and limiting its concept of its own business. The paper discusses Paramount's fiscal position at the beginning of the decade and its corporate strategy of reducing its outstanding stock, expanding into virtually every aspect of television, diversifying into growth industries, and establishing a plan of motion picture production and distribution which would ensure its survival through the 1950s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This production history records the planning, filming, and initial distribution of ALL MY BABIES, a 1952 documentary film designed as "an educational tool to improve the services of midwives." The paper describes the conditions of filming in rural Georgia and relations between the white film crew and black cast members. Sources include extensive interviews with surviving members of the production crew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to trace and articulate the extremely rich production and postproduction history of the early Soviet classic, Sergei Eisenstein's Bronenosets Potemkin(The Battleship Potemkin, 1925). By engaging Paolo Cherchi Usai's idea that early films exist as multiple objects, the paper explicates how Eisenstein's film was re-edited in three of its most important versions: the original 1925 cut; the first international cut, produced in 1926; and the 1950 cut. By elucidating the distinctive sociopolitical conditions that crucially informed all three cuts of the film, the article interprets and compares the visual transformation of Potemkinin accordance with editorial and re-editorial alterations, identifying a nexus of contributing factors that regulate the economy of the visible in Eisenstein's film. I argue that the junction at which authoritative social impulses are negotiated with Eisenstein's individual vision takes us to what might be one of the critical moments in Eisenstein's early career in which his early, avant-garde-informed approach to filmmaking is recalibrated with the rules of dramaturgy of film form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period before and during World War I, American newspapers were involved in a cutthroat war to increase circulation. To do so, they increasingly turned to tie-ins with the new popular medium of motion pictures in order to boost readership, and to increase newspaper profits by theatre receipts as well. In response to these pressures, the Chicago Tribune decided to groom photographer Edwin F. Weigle as its film correspondent overseas. To this end, it sent Weigle to Vera Cruz to film conflict in April 1914, and in August, after the World War broke out, to Belgium. In 1915 and 1916 the Tribune sent him to Europe on two different occasions, where he made feature documentary films. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Weigle joined the U. S. Army Signal Corps, and filmed with the 35th Division in France. After the war, Weigle and his wife filmed in Ireland during the Troubles in the 1920s. Weigle retired as a film correspondent shortly after World War I. The article investigates the changes in film production in the dawning age of big newsreel companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the influence of activist Catholic clergy and laity on the creation and implementation of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's production code. The operation of the Production Code Administration in its first decade is examined with specific reference to the problems surrounding BELLE OF THE NINETIES (Paramount, 1934), THE MERRY WIDOW (MGM, 1934), THE PRESIDENT VANISHES (Paramount, 1934), and BLACK FURY (Warner Bros., 1935). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an account of the career of the Swedish film producer Frans Lundberg and his features from 1910 to 1912. It also uncovers the production combination behind the mysterious film LIEBE MACHT BLIND. The material is part of a book on Frans Lundberg published in Sweden in 1988. An earlier version of this article was delivered at the conference on Popular European Cinema in September 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a cultural history of film and television at Louisiana's Angola Prison in the 1950s to show that moving images coexisted with the brutalities for which the prison is known, including stark labor conditions, corporal violence, and punitive racism. Despite their promotion as improvements during an era of reform, the technologies of film and television accommodated the prison's repressive hierarchies of race, gender, and labor. By analyzing the penitentiary's newspaper, the Angolite , alongside its peer publications at other prisons, I show that prison newspapers played a significant role in promoting film exhibition in carceral spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals completely unknown information regarding the production of a film covering the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It introduces and analyzes a translation of forgotten interviews that Leni Riefenstahl gave in Berlin and then in Belgrade in advance of the Olympic Games beginning that July, and which occurred before her journey to Athens for the filming of the events. Leni Riefenstahl's statements in these heretofore unexamined interviews fully support Susan Sontag's view that the two-part Olympics film was entirely planned and funded by the Nazi government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a historical analysis of Ed's Coed (1929), one of the earliest and most accomplished feature-length films made by college students in the United States. Student-made films of the silent era have received little critical attention, but they should be understood within the diverse overlapping categories that encompass amateur local filmmaking. Engaging the underexplored resource of student newspapers, the authors document how Ed's Coed ,a 35mm college-life romantic comedy, was produced by University of Oregon students working alongside a professional Hollywood second-unit cameraman. The resulting production history reveals the film crew's sophisticated approach to publicity, fund-raising, and cinematography that beneficially extends our understanding of the range of amateur local practices in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the British films of Julius Pinschewer, the pioneer of German film advertising, starting with propaganda he made during World War I. In the films he subsequently made for the British National Savings Committee and National Coal Board, Pinschewer employs techniques from his anti-British war propaganda. By tracing cinematic techniques and commercial themes that migrate across national borders, I argue that Pinschewer's films qualify as a transnational advertising cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary filmmaker Robert Drew's rhetoric about his observational approach to filmmaking served a centrally important function: to sell his approach to networks and sponsors for funding and distribution. This rhetoric depended on the contexts in which Drew discussed his filmmaking approach, a context that included a television industry that was wary, if not hostile, to independent news producers; sponsors that were resistant to making significant financial investments in television journalism; and an observational style that was commercially unproven, expensive, and time-consuming. Drew's rhetoric also shifted over time as industry circumstances and opportunities changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unbeknown to most Busby Berkeley scholars, two dance numbers in one of his most popular films, Footlight Parade (1933), were ghost-directed by fellow choreographer Larry Ceballos, who received no credit on the screen despite contractual obligations to the contrary. I suggest that the omission of Ceballos’s name from the film was the result of Warner Bros.’ attempts to solidify Berkeley’s marketing utility as a behind-the-scenes star. The miscredit in Footlight Parade underscores the precarious, faceless nature of offscreen labor in the studio era and the industrial mechanisms beyond filmic text that contribute to the construction of an auteur persona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues for the importance of Kodachrome in stimulating direct 16mm professional film production in the late prewar and early postwar periods. Introduced for amateurs in 1935, Kodachrome became viable for professional work in 1938, when Kodak developed a successful means of duplicating 16mm Kodachrome film for release prints. Despite the traditional preference for 35mm in professional production-even for films destined primarily for 16mm nontheatrical screening-16mm Kodachrome emerged as an attractive and economical alternative for color at a time when fully successful 35mm color derived only from the very costly and cumbersome three-strip Technicolor process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines slapstick comedies about moviemaking produced by the Mack Sennett Comedies studio (1917–33) and studies the model of filmmaking that these metamovies advance. Mack Sennett Comedies’ movies on moviemaking, this essay suggests, repeat founding facts, icons, and technology associated with the Keystone era and, through their constant replay, elevate those motifs to the status of myth. In so doing, Mack Sennett Comedies not only built its corporate identity as a slapstick universe of play, leisure, and fun but also contributed to the imagination of Hollywood filmmaking, advancing slapstick practices as a model for the way in which the film industry represented its early years. As an addendum, this essay also reprints and examines a postcard from a booklet entitled Making the “Movies”: A Peep into Filmland, issued by the California Postcard Company in 1922. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cyclical production theory founded on ideas advanced by historians, literary theorists, business scholars, and trade press journalists, this essay examines the associations between film and the public sphere. Film cycles are formed by contiguous events and activities inside and outside the institutions of filmmaking. Identifying these cycles and then writing a descriptive account of their formation, consolidation, and dissipation will, I argue, produce a history of film understood through its relationship to the topical that is neither deterministic nor reductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on the author's own years of professional experience and interviews with working visual effects experts to show the extent to which digital technology has become central to the creation of today's Hollywood movies. He explains this through an examination of the role of the Visual Effects Supervisor, a key artistic and technical position charged with creating a homogenized ''look'' integrating both digital and analog elements. The author describes some of the underlying fundamentals of the visual effects process and the professional paths that lead to the VFX supervisor role, and covers the duties of the VFX supervisor during the sequential phases of preproduction, shooting, and postproduction, while providing practical examples and explanations of technical terms. Finally, he looks at different approaches and techniques employed to achieve integrated ''looks'', touching on the different aspects of film and digital media, color, specialized VFX companies, the stereoscopic format, and the increasing reliance on visual effects as a tool for subtle story-telling rather than simply overt spectacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the post-war period a group of American filmmakers moved to Europe to resume careers cut short by the Hollywood blacklist. Although welcomed by the European film community, which was both sympathetic to their plight and eager to capitalize on their talents, job opportunities were scarce. The essay concentrates on the experiences of directors Joseph Losey and Jules Dassin in Italy, France and Britain. It discusses Losey's "Stranger on the Prowl" (1952), produced in Italy by Riviera Films, a company organized by blacklistees, the difficulties encountered by Dassin in Paris, France and the fate of various blacklisted filmmakers in London, England many of whom worked without credit with American producer Hannah Weinstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important aspect of early film production which has remained largely unexplored is that related to the manufacture and marketing of cine-film stock. During the international expansion of industrialised cinematography - from 1905 to 1912 - the Parisian film production companies struggled against the norms dictated by the Eastman Kodak Company, which held a virtual world-wide monopoly on the manufacture of cine film. The first part of this essay presents some aspects of the development of cine-film manufacturing and marketing in Europe with particular regard to Franco-German co-operation. The second half focuses on the growth of AGFA's cine-film manufacturing facilities, the Filmfabrik, during the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much industrial film production, whether involving amateur avant-gardists or professionals, remains terra incognita, despite the fact that audiences for industrials at certain times in the twentieth century rivalled and even surpassed those of Hollywood films, whether shown theatrically or non-theatrically. While not all industrials can be read as avant-garde, certain industrials at the very least mimic the kind of formal play that has defined the avant-garde, including James Sibley Watson's The Eyes of Science (1931) and Highlights and Shadows (1937). This article details the production and reception of these films by drawing on previously unavailable corporate and archival material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a space in British filmmaking in the interwar years that is neither formally avant-garde, nor alternative in any politically radical sense, nor, very often, self-consciously experimental. It argues instead that cinema in Britain offered a space of transition within both its historical moment and cultural context, a space characterised by 'play'. Precisely because the 'playful' strategies of much 1920s British filmmaking emerged from culturally ingrained practices, their engagement with cinematic form indirectly registered processes of cultural change, suggesting the encounter with the 'new' which cinema offered to certain actors, writers and would-be cineastes of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing extensively on trade publications, such as American Cinematographer, and on the analysis of specific shots from films such The Andromeda Strain, The Boston Strangler, All the President's Men, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out, the author examines strategies cinematographers employ to conceal the focal split when using the split-field diopter and points out how directors such as Brian DePalma use the diopter instead of shot/reverse shot editing and to achieve deep focus in anamorphic filmmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Joe Breen who won the fourth honorary Oscar Award at the twenty-sixth Academy Awards ceremony held on March 25,1954. He was awarded for his conscientious, open-minded, and dignified management of the Motion Picture Production Code. Breen had served almost twenty-one years as the head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), the body that censored all films shown in the theatres of the U.S. Breen had cultivated a reputation that bore little resemblance to open-minded and dignified. As a chief enforcer and interpreter of the Production Code, Breen was capable of being high handed and capricious. Breen was totally dedicated to enforcing both the spirit and the letter of the code and was also capable of quoting passages in the Code that did not exist. For many film historians, the image of Joe Breen is that of a belligerent, profane and sanctimonious bigot. Although he presented himself to Hollywood as a self-confident and indefatigable defender of the Code, private correspondence of Breen reveals a very different picture.

The article discusses the origins of the film exchange. Film distributors frequently speak of selling film to theaters even though films are actually rented on a limited basis. The notion of renting of motion pictures was thought a practical solution by some members of the business as early as the 1890s. The agencies engaging in the practice of renting or trading motion pictures were known as film exchanges. Before serving exclusively as film clearinghouses, exchanges functioned as full-service stores for theater owner/managers. Motion picture and stereopticon slide projectors were sold, rented, or traded along with movie screens and other supplies. Many of the ads listed footage and equipment prices, which, in these early days, were far more important than the title of the film or the names of the actors appearing in it. For film exchanges, quantity was initially preferable to quality. Print vandalism was a sensitive and explosive topic for exchanges, exhibitors, and projectionists. Since all film prints underwent heavy usage inevitable problems arose. Exchanges blamed theater owners for clipping out scenes for personal use or to add to their film collections, thus rendering many pictures incomprehensible to audiences.

This article investigates several questions about the final stages of the production of the film "Sunrise," and the first year of its release, mainly in New York and Los Angeles, California. The success or failure of "Sunrise," measured in financial terms, continues to be of interest. Money aside, the unique characteristics of the film have been intensely felt ever since it was released in 1927. As of 2005, "Sunrise" remains a source of inspiration and a point of reference for the most divergent of international film-makers, writers about film and film viewers.

The article compares global film production and local film production in Sweden. In 1908, local film production was a quite large phenomenon, and film production in Sweden was slowly propelled by such efforts which received highly enthusiastic reviews, particularly in Stockholm, since most other cities had only very limited newspaper publication. In December 1905, Karlstad's first moving picture theatre Biografen opened in a purpose-built structure. In the spring of 1906, Swedish scenes were offered, often tourist subjects or news events shown with locally-produced films. B.F. Andersson produced a number of such films until his death in March 1908 when his wife and daughter took over the business and continued producing films. Other examples of local film production can be found in several other cities in Sweden such as Helsingborg, Kristinehamn, Kalmar and Trelleborg. From 1904, internationalization emerged as Pathé's main objective in a process designed to gain access and control of the global film market. Market expansion became increasingly important when earnings declined in 1909-10 after years of higher revenues which peaked in 1906-07.

This article presents information about motion picture presentation and production in Portland, Oregon from 1894 to 1906. In the locations hosting film, Portland was also consistent with the national phenomenon of developing three classes of audience. The kinetoscope and its explosion of successors in penny arcades largely became outlets for suggestive scenes in vulgar settings. Projection was introduced to large stage theatre audiences, and those same theatres featured subsequent productions of note, usually emphasising their scientific and technological importance. Churches, civic organisations and expositions occasionally used film to support their programs and agendas. In addition to film presentation, Portland, parts of Oregon and Washington also hosted filmmaking. The practice of taking local views before presenting them to local audiences was a common promotional technique. Gregory De Kannet’s gorge views and Shields’ various scenes in the Portland area encouraged citizens to attend performances and to experience the novelty of seeing their own home and perhaps themselves on screen.

Recounts the highlights of a film project funded by the Edison Co. in Great Britain in 1913 based on the diary of the production unit's director, Charles Brabin. Personal account of the film-making experience; Consideration for the appeal of the locale and the weather; Emphasis on directorial decisions.

Discusses the controversy involving Max Schach and his film company Capitol Film Productions Ltd. in the 1930s in Great Britain. Production of the film "Abdul the Damned"; Growing mood of unrest in the industry as a whole over financing; Ways in which Schach's profligacy had caused the whole train of events culminating in a number of lawsuits; Link between Schach and the Aldgate Trust.

The article describes the development of three-color processing of motion pictures implemented by Technicolor, focusing on the use of the process in the motion pictures "La Cucaracha," directed by Lloyd Corrigan, and "Becky Sharp." The technical aspects of three-color processing are described in detail. Broadway designer Robert Edmond Jones was hired as a color designer for "La Cucaracha," who argued for an integration of drama and narrative with color in motion picture production. "Becky Sharp" featured the color design talents of Rouben Mamoulian and Robert Edmond Jones.

The article discusses the history of the Ambrosio Film, a silent film production company in Italy and the emergence of short films. It states that a fascination with photography was the common denominator in the first meetings of the company's key figures. It was founded by Arturo Ambrosio, first as a photography studio and eventually worked with experts in the field as the business boomed. The firm's early production was influenced by the work of actors Luigi Maggi and Arrigo Frusta. Because of the success of films in the country, profits of the Company increased between 1912 and 1913.

The article discusses early developments in early Italian cinema in the city. The cinema was said to have displayed a remarkable historicist character, combining narrative morphologies and techniques adopted from theater, literature and art, among others. The Italian city was a familiar optical attraction amidst the positivist culture and the idealist heritage. It also states that the emergence of the Italian cinema disrupted the old harmony and stasis and changed the sense of local origins into various identities linked to modern progress.

The article discusses the history of the Società Italiana Cines, a film production company in Italy in the 1900s. According to historian Gian Piero Brunetta, the early Italian film industry evolved along two directions, first is the local operation and the other, the larger organizations. It was also reported that with the support pf the Banco di Roma, the company management took steps towards launching an ambitious expansion program that would ensure its active and competitive participation in domestic and overseas markets. The company was also able to publicize its product from leading American and French firms by drawing references to Italy's historical and cultural links to the fine arts.

An interview with filmmaker Irvin V. Willat is presented. He offers information on his career before being a film director. He relates the events that introduced him to the motion picture industry. He describes film directors Thomas Ince and Mary Miles Minter. He addresses his involvement with a number of films such as "Behind the Door."

The article examines the adoption of innovative cinema apparatuses in films shown in Amsterdam, Netherlands from 1896 to 1910. The fascination for new cinema apparatuses, including the Lumière Cinématographe, the Théatrographe and the Bioscope, begun during the novelty period, somewhere between 1895 and 1898. From this period until the first decade of the twentieth-century, film shows in Amsterdam were shown using the Lumière and Bioscope. Various films during this period focused on newsworthy events, examples of which include "Entry of the Tsar and Tsarina in Paris."

The article discusses the making of William Dickson's "Dickson Experimental Sound Film," which is believed to be the earliest surviving effort at creating synchronized sound film. The production was made sometime during the mid-1890s as one of a series of collaborative experiments by Thomas Edison's laboratory staff to perfect the Kineto-Phonograph, a device intended to combine the separate technologies of the Phonograph and the Kinetoscope into a single peephole mechanism for the presentation of motion pictures with synchonised sound. Efforts to reunite the film and sound track for preservation and research purposes, prior to the 1998 Domitor conference, were hampered by a number of obstacles.

The article presents the text of the memoirs by Dutch camera-operator Franz Anton Nöggerath junior (1880-1947). It stresses the important role that Nöggerath and his father, Anton Nöggerath senior (1859-1908), played in the history of film production, exhibition and distribution in the first fifteen to twenty years of the cinema in the Netherlands. It describes Nöggerath's experiences in filming news and travelogues. It also highlights Nöggerath's training in film production and distribution.

The article examines the circumstance surrounding the production of the film "The Woman on the Beach," directed by Jean Renoir. The film was directed by Renoir under the strict supervision imposed by his producer, Darryl F. Zanuck. The finished product, according to Renoir, was an avant-garde film which would have found its niche a quarter of a century earlier. The level of tense abstraction achieved by Renoir in "The Women on the Beach" was similar to Fritz Lang's "The Women in the Window" and Max Orphuls' "The Reckless. The abstraction was further emphasized as all the things that can not be shown for reasons of censorship were cut.

The article examines innovations in cinematography and design introduced by Technicolor in the U.S. during the 1930s. In 1935, the three-color process developed by Technicolor was used in the film "Becky Sharp," which was produced by independent producer Pioneer Pictures. The company continued processing twenty full-color feature films from the start of 1936 through 1938. Other film studios such as Paramount, United Artists, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century-Fox, RKO and MGM started their color feature films in 1938.

The article features various motion picture-related inventions of French technician, cameraman and projectionist Eugene Augustin Lauste in the National Museum of American History's Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. These apparatus were made between 1900 and 1914 during the time he worked at Edison's West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory, W.K.L. Dickson and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. These apparatus include three vibrating mirror recorders, quadruplex telephone set and acetylene gas light valve, among others.