Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema

Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema PDF Author: Donald McCaffrey
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The latest offering from the Reference Guides to the World's Cinema series, this critical survey of key films, actors, directors, and screenwriters during the silent era of the American cinema offers a broad-ranging portrait of the motion picture production of silent film. Detailed but concise alphabetical entries include over 100 film titles and 150 personnel. An introductory chapter explores the early growth of the new silent medium while the final chapter of this encyclopedic study examines the sophistication of the silent cinema. These two chapters outline film history from its beginnings until the perfection of synchronized sound, and reflect upon the themes and techniques established with the silent cinema that continued into the sound era through modern times. The annotated entries, alphabetically arranged by film title or personnel, include brief bibliographies and filmographies. An appendix lists secondary but important movies and their creators. Film and popular culture scholars will appreciate the vast amount of information that has been culled from various sources and that builds upon the increased studies and research of the past ten years.

Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema

Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema PDF Author: Donald McCaffrey
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
The latest offering from the Reference Guides to the World's Cinema series, this critical survey of key films, actors, directors, and screenwriters during the silent era of the American cinema offers a broad-ranging portrait of the motion picture production of silent film. Detailed but concise alphabetical entries include over 100 film titles and 150 personnel. An introductory chapter explores the early growth of the new silent medium while the final chapter of this encyclopedic study examines the sophistication of the silent cinema. These two chapters outline film history from its beginnings until the perfection of synchronized sound, and reflect upon the themes and techniques established with the silent cinema that continued into the sound era through modern times. The annotated entries, alphabetically arranged by film title or personnel, include brief bibliographies and filmographies. An appendix lists secondary but important movies and their creators. Film and popular culture scholars will appreciate the vast amount of information that has been culled from various sources and that builds upon the increased studies and research of the past ten years.

Silent Films, 1877-1996

Silent Films, 1877-1996 PDF Author: Robert K. Klepper
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604843
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
This film reference covers 646 silent motion pictures, starting with Eadweard Muybridge's initial motion photography experiments in 1877 and even including The Taxi Dancer (1996). Among the genres included are classics, dramas, Westerns, light comedies, documentaries and even poorly produced early pornography. Masterpieces such as Joan the Woman (1916), Intolerance (1916) and Faust (1926) can be found, as well as rare titles that have not received critical attention since their original releases. Each entry provides the most complete credits possible, a full description, critical commentary, and an evaluation of the film's unique place in motion picture history. Birth dates, death dates, and other facts are provided for the directors and players where available, with a selection of photographs of those individuals. The work is thoroughly indexed.

Navarro's Silent Film Guide

Navarro's Silent Film Guide PDF Author: Dan Navarro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982921906
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
Navarro's Guide to Silent Films is an exhaustive directory listing every silent feature film (5 reels or more) produced in the United States, 9,000 titles in all! Each of the entries includes title, year of release, director, and/or production company, cast list, and a synopsis. The volume totals 641 pages, with 587 pages of film entries, 40 pages of photographs, and an index of 38 pages. Its target audience includes film buffs, students, and researchers. Chronicling the world of film before the appearance of talkies, the book includes every genre, including comedy, western, gangster, spectacle, and romance. It is organized alphabetically by film title, but also allows the reader to search by actor or director using the extensive index. The author's selection of film stills and publicity photos pays tribute to such classic films as D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (starring John Barrymore), and Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra. Publicity photos from the period include icons such as Lon Chaney, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, Dorothy Gish, Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford, among many others.

Israeli Film

Israeli Film PDF Author: Amy Kronish
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313052824
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Israeli cinema is a central tool for understanding the contemporary challenges facing Israeli society as it has developed its identity during the past decades. Although films can be considered individual pieces of work, we can gain a unique perspective on the nation's society through a careful analysis of the subject matter, issues, and styles of expression of this unique medium. Since its inception, Israeli cinema has been occupied with the hardships of an ongoing war, problems of Jewish-Arab relations, and the major survival issues of the state. Despite this focus, Israeli filmmaking is in fact much more complex and varied. Indeed, it covers a wide spectrum of issues that have developed during the 70 years during the production of its first feature film. Israeli Film: A Reference Guide provides a survey of all major films made in Israel, as well as biographies of major Israeli filmmakers and an overview essay summarizing major trends in Israeli film—and, in doing so, offers a commentary on social trends, historical challenges, and societal issues.

Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada

Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada PDF Author: Peter Rist
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313017255
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This new volume in the Greenwood Press series Reference Guides to the World's Cinema discusses the films and personalities of the Canadian cinema. This guide encompasses the diverse output of both the English and French Canadian communities and includes 175 films and 125 filmmakers and actors. Alphabetically arranged entries discuss important films, actors, directors, shorts, and a number of experimental films. With few exceptions, films are included only if their production company was incorporated in Canada. Similarly, filmmakers and actors represent people who have worked primarily in Canada. This guide will interest scholars, students, and film buffs. Brief bibliographies after each entry provide sources for further reading. Three appendixes provide additional information regarding Canadian born filmmakers and actors excluded from the main text, winners of Canadian film awards, and a listing of the top ten Canadian films.

American Silent Film

American Silent Film PDF Author: William K. Everson
Publisher: Da Capo
ISBN: 9780306808760
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Praised as the "best modern survey of the silent period" (New Republic), this indispensable history tells you everything you need to know about American silent film, from the nickelodeons in the early 1900s to the birth of the first "talkies" in the late 1920s. The author provides vivid descriptions of classic pictures such as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Sunrise, The Covered Wagon, and Greed, and lucidly discusses their technical and artistic merits and weaknesses. He pays tribute to acknowledged masters like D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Lillian and Dorothy Gish, but he also gives ample attention to previously neglected yet equally gifted actors and directors. In addition, the book covers individual genres, such as the comedy, western gangster, and spectacle, and explores such essential but little-understood subjects as art direction, production design, lighting and camera techniques, and the art of the subtitle. Intended for all scholars, students, and lovers of film, this fascinating book, which features over 150 film stills, provides a rich and comprehensive overview of this unforgettable era in film history.

Guidebook to Film

Guidebook to Film PDF Author: Ronald Gottesman
Publisher: Ardent Media
ISBN: 9780030852923
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


Still

Still PDF Author: David S. Shields
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601343X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant.

Flickering Empire

Flickering Empire PDF Author: Michael Glover Smith
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231850794
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Flickering Empire tells the fascinating yet little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of American film production in the years before the rise of Hollywood (1907–1913). As entertaining as it is informative, Flickering Empire straddles the worlds of academic and popular nonfiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures, including Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles, are major players in the narrative—in addition to important though forgotten industry titans, such as "Colonel" William Selig, George Spoor, and Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson.

Acting

Acting PDF Author: Mary Beth Osnes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576078043
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
A groundbreaking, cross-cultural reference work exploring the diversity of expression found in rituals, festivals, and performances, uncovering acting techniques and practices from around the world. Acting: An International Encyclopedia explores the amazing diversity of dramatic expression found in rituals, festivals, and live and filmed performances. Its hundreds of alphabetically arranged, fully referenced entries offer insights into famous players, writers, and directors, as well as notable stage and film productions from around the world and throughout the history of theater, cinema, and television. The book also includes a surprising array of additional topics, including important venues (from Greek amphitheaters to Broadway and Hollywood), acting schools (the Actor's Studio) and companies (the Royal Shakespeare), performance genres (from religious pageants to puppetry), technical terms of the actor's art, and much more. It is a unique resource for exploring the techniques performers use to captivate their audiences, and how those techniques have evolved to meet the demands of performing through Greek masks and layers of Kabuki makeup, in vast halls or tiny theaters, or for the unforgiving eye of the camera.