Researching women in silent cinema: new findings and perspectives

This anthology exposes the richness and variety of interests that motivate feminist film research today. Exploring women’s contribution to silent cinema, scholars from across the globe address questions of performance, nationality, industry, technology, labor, and theory of feminist historiography. The volume builds on the thematic, methodological, and material diversity that characterized earlier efforts in women’s film history, and the originating context of the sixth Women and the Silent Screen conference (Bologna, 2010). Much emphasis is given to the transitional period of silent cinema (1910s to the early 1920s), which emerges as the field where feminist film scholars are beginning to claim their own theoretical and historical ‘place’. While giving a new impetus to the idea of transitional cinema, the collected essays also illuminate the importance of film’s transnational circulation. Questions of nation and nationhood, and women’s inclusion or exclusion within these terms, are examined in connection to issues of cultural globalization. How did American serial queens impact early Chinese film? How did the variety stage accommodate American films in Rio de Janeiro? Along what lines might we discuss women filmmakers who literally toured the world? These are just some of the issues that are discussed in the volume. Each investigation prompts us into distinct acts of cultural contextualization. A particular focus on acting and the agency of the actress is shared across the volume. The fundamental figure of the actress links multiple threads of scholarship, traversing different films and national cinemas. Alice Guy, Asta Nielsen, Florence Turner, Lois Weber, Mary Pickford, Esfir’ Shub, Pearl White, Vera Karalli, Aleksandra Khokhlova, Elsa Lanchester, Louise Fazenda, Sarah Bernhardt, Gemma Bellincioni, Angelina Buracci, Yin Mingzhu, Leni Riefensthal: these are but some of the names that are encountered across the essays in the collection. New findings are exposed and new research perspectives are opened through these and other figures, allowing us to uncover original ways of thinking about women’s visibility and agency on film.

Kinomatics: a global study into cinema data

This paper describes a creative industries research project that has applied quantitative approaches commonly used in scientific research to the study of international cinema performance. Using film screening data collected over a two year period, this paper discusses analysis of a global dataset using Appadurai's "-scapes" framework. We have identified several of these "-scapes" that help us investigate film industry behaviour. Concentrating on Appadurai's "Technoscape" an investigation into the geographic spread and distribution of a new and emerging technology, High Frame Rate cinema, has been made. HFR films have screened around the world to mixed reviews. Geographic distribution of HFR technologies and change in this distribution has also been uneven.

Australian films at large: expanding the evidence about Australian cinema performance

International markets have in recent years become a critical component of the business model for Hollywood cinema, opening up a renewed interest in the global dimensions of film diffusion. Smaller film-producing nations such as Denmark have similarly emphasised global distribution as a key component of the industry's success. Typically, however, claims for Australian film industry success rely almost exclusively on a film's domestic box office performance. This paper considers the possibilities for an expanded approach to measuring success and failure in the Australian film industry. Adopting analytic methods from cinema studies, cultural economics and geo-spatial sciences, this paper will examine the international theatrical circulation of Australian films using a unique global database of cinema showtimes. This data set captures all formal film screenings in 47 countries over an 18-month period ending 1 June 2014 and enables detailed empirical study of the locations visited by Australian-produced films. In conjunction with relevant box office data and contextual critical commentary, we propose a revised and expanded ‘film impact rating’ for assessing the reported performance of Australian films.

2nd hand cinema

Image of scratched frames from 16mm film, reframed and published as stand-alone image

Material damage: expanded cinema

Over a 35 year career de Bruyn’s bracing and immersive work has investigated legacies of trauma anddisplacement, dealing with the residue of the white Australia policy and his own experience ofchildhood migration to Australia from Holland.In recent years de Bruyn has presented his hand drawn 16mm animation films as performances, withde Bruyn manipulating the images live, and accompanying them with a live vocal soundtrack. returnsto Auckland to deliver an expanded cinema performance for 16mm projectors and voice.

Mixed feelings: Anglo-Indians and the distribution of the sensible in Indian cinema

Hollywood, and various regional cinemas in India typically represent Mixed-Race Anglo-Indians as a degenerate community marked by lax morals, alcoholism, and indolence. These stereotypical tropes typically generate indignant protests from members of this miniscule Indian community, and debates about the representation of Anglo-Indians focus on the injustices propagated by such stereotypes. This paper rethinks Anglo-Indian representation in cinema by drawing on Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘the distribution of the sensible,’ which provides a cartography for understanding how one’s various identity assignations structure sensory experience. In other words those who are marginalized have ways of seeing and hearing from those occupy normative or dominant subject positions, and these differences are best approached in terms of neo-Kantian aesthetic judgment. It also argues, with Rancière, that ‘inequality’ is built into the distribution of the sensible. Drawing on a number of Indian and Hollywood films — including Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981) Anjan Dutt’s Bada Din (1998) Ismail Merchant’s Cotton Mary (2000), Bow Barracks Forever (2004) and Harry McClure’s Going Away (2013) — the paper contends that Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ allows us to think through a politics that is connected to ‘aesthetic judgement’ as well as a politics of differentiation that informs our understanding of the function of minoritarian characters in narrative cinema.

Counting the cost: the impact of cinema ticket prices in Australia

The authors discuss the change in cinema ticket price and its effect on audience perception on cinema attendance in Australia. Topics discussed include the comparison of ticket prices in Australia to countries such as the U.S., Japan, and New Zealand, the reason of high ticket prices in Australia such as high wages in theatre operation and piracy, and the drop of cinema admission as result of high ticket prices. They mention the social equity issues raised by the high cost of cinema tickets.

Interview with Mariann Lewinsky, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, July 2, 2015

A conversation with Mariann Lewinsky, Il Cinema Ritrovato, arguing that women have a disproportionate impact upon the programming of silent film at festivals. It asks how she works and, specifically, how the change to digital has impacted archival outreach and access across the globe today.