The Gumshoe Was a Lady
posted September 27, 2011
Not all film detectives have been hardboiled men. The woman gumshoe has a history, too. Philippa Gates has canvassed the women of film – and the men – who have broken the cases and put away the crooks.
Polish Star Rises Again
posted September 7, 2011
Pola Negri's early vehicle, "Mania," Rediscovered and fully restored. She dazzled audiences in her day – even Chaplin and Valentino. Hardly a household name, now, Pola Negri was nonetheless one of the most exotic stars of the silent-film era, famed in the United States and Europe.
The Audio-Visual Record of a Brutalized Nation
posted August 15, 2011
Rwanda has been far from alone in experiencing the horrors of genocide. Now, efforts are under way to advance a long, painful process of national healing by creating an audio-visual record of those events at the Iriba Center for Multicultural Heritage.
Paul Rotha’s Missing Legacy
posted July 8, 2011
Even a minute of Paul Rotha’s 1936 documentary, Shipyard, provides proof of the English filmmaker’s extraordinary accomplishment. A conference at the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, 8-10 September 2011 considers Rotha's legacy.
A Cinematic Cabinet of Curiosities
posted June 14, 2011
12th Annual Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium Das Wunderkino: A Cinematic Cabinet of Curiosities Bucksport, Maine, July 28-30 2011 THE CURIOUS WORLD OF DIE WUNDERKAMMER (the “wonder-room” or “miracle chamber”) as Germans termed a collection of objects, specimens, and artifacts that was a precursor of the modern museum, inspires this summer’s Northeast Historic Film’s symposium.
Chasing Down the Film Noir
posted April 26, 2011
In Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir (Rutgers University Press), Robert Miklitsch evidences a consuming passion for the form. And he achieves marvelous results, says Krin Gabbard, author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture: “Robert Miklitsch has convinced me. Sound and music in film noir are every
Fairy Tales of the Silver Screen
posted April 22, 2011
Jack Zipes has spent decades analyzing the way the stories work, and their most effective film versions. Little research has been done on fairy-tale films; but of what there is, Jack Zipes has been responsible for a large part. Among the handful of books that have appeared on the subject is his The Enchanted Screen: The
Preserving Charles Burnett
posted March 14, 2011
The films of Charles Burnett have represented black American life far from the Hollywood clichés, and the film restoration and preservation community has been eager to help spread the word.
Cinefest: Silent Rarities Lovingly Presented
posted February 12, 2011
Fans of animation have their Comic-Con, sure, but for cineastes there are geek-chic events like Cinecon, Slapsticon, Cinesation, Cinevent, and – over four days each March in wintry Syracuse, New York – Cinefest.
What Illness Looks Like
posted January 17, 2011
Thanks to a small band of advocates, the fields of medical and public-health history have been paying increasing attention to the visual – to the vast assortment of still and moving images that illustrate and in many cases constitute those histories. In a new book, Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (University of Minnesota