Charles Urban

Based on original research from Charles Urban’s own papers, this is the first biography of this influential film maker and innovator. It is also a historical study of the development of the non-fiction film in Britain and America in the early years of cinema, told through the experiences of the leading pioneer of the form. Charles Urban was a renowned figure in his time, and he has remained a name in film history chiefly for his development of Kinemacolor, the world’s first successful natural colour moving picture system. He was also a pioneer in the filming of war, science, travel, actuality and news, a fervent advocate of the value of film as an educative force, and a controversial but important innovator of film propaganda in wartime. The book uses Urban’s story as a means of showing how the non-fiction film developed in the period 1897-1925, and the dilemmas that it faced within a cinema culture in which the entertainment fiction film was dominant. Urban’s solutions – some successful, some less so – illustrate the groundwork that led to the development of documentary film. The book considers the roles of film as informer, educator and generator of propaganda, and the social and aesthetic function of colour in the years when cinema was still working out what it was capable of and how best to reach audiences. Luke McKernan also curates a web resource on Charles Urban at www.charlesurban.com Winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award 2014.

Charles Montgomery’s Happy City will revolutionize the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and condo towers an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods. Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience and Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how our cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world--and all of us can help build it.

"Cases argued and determined in the Court of Appeals, Supreme and lower courts of record of New York State, with key number annotations." (varies)

Following on from the first volume, this book details the engrossing story of the two camera operators sent out to the Balkans by the American film producer Charles Urban, who had established his company in London in the early 20th century. The first of them, the Englishman Charles Rider Noble, filmed as many as 38 short living pictures in Bulgaria in 1903 and 1904. The second, the Scot John Mackenzie, travelled with his bioscope through Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania in 1905. Thus, thanks to the two Britons, the first sequences of films depicting the landscapes, historical and archaeological monuments, architectural landmarks, cultural traditions and ethnographic features of the region, as well as some of its public events of the time, were shown in the peninsula. This book provides an exciting trip ‘through savage Europe’, tracing the amazing adventures of its ‘main characters’ and their life paths to their very end. Therefore, it makes absorbing reading, while preserving its status as a unique scientific work, intended for film historians, early cinema researchers, film and television archives experts, college and university lecturers, students and schoolchildren. It will be of interest to everyone who, regardless of their age, loves the ‘Seventh Art’ and adores the secrets its early history still holds.

Meet the personification of todays new etiquette, Mr. Social Grace weekly advice columnist in print, radio and online as he reveals the basics of good manners for everyday urban life. He offers a new interpretation of good manners that can serve as a powerful tool to help twenty-first century people get along better. Presented in answers to real-life quandaries is Social Graces philosophy of etiquette.

Memoirs of documentary film producer Charles Urban who was one of the most important figures in the film industry prior to the First World War.

Library has v. 1-3 of 8 only.

Library has v. 1-3 of 8 only.