Early Cinema Today : The Art of Programming and Live Performance

A collection of essays exploring current issues in early film archiving, curation, and research. Invented in the 1890s and premiered in Paris by the Lumière brothers, the cinematograph along with Louis Le Prince’s single-lens camera projector are considered by film historians to be the precursors to modern-day motion picture devices. These early movies were often shown in town halls, on fairgrounds, and in theaters, requiring special showmanship skills to effectively work the equipment and entertain onlookers. Within the last decade, film archives and film festivals have unearthed this lost art and have featured outstanding examples of the culture of early cinema reconfigured for today’s audiences. “[T]oday’s programming of early cinema . . . has to consider the audience if it wants to be successful in making the visual heritage available to as many people as possible. Early Cinema Today shows in a fascinating, versatile, and refreshing way how this can be implemented. . . . [This book] provides practitioners with innovative ideas on how to engage potential audiences, while providing scholars with valuable insight into how film archivists and curators shape perceptions of early cinema and, through this, the direction of film scholarship.” —The Moving Image “[This] collection presents a wide range of approaches to the programming of early film, both historically and in the present-day context, while sounding a vibrant and timely call to review the relation that has evolved between scholars, archivists, and film programmers in matters relating to the programming of early cinema today.” —Film History