Useful Cinema

By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, the essays in Useful Cinema show how moving images became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as factories and community halls, people encountered industrial, educational, training, advertising, and other types of “useful cinema.” Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces, conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape common sense about cinema’s place in contemporary life. Whether measured in terms of the number of films shown, the size of audiences, or the economic activity generated, the “non-theatrical sector” was a substantial and enduring parallel to the more spectacular realm of commercial film. In Useful Cinema, scholars examine organizations such as UNESCO, the YMCA, the Amateur Cinema League, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also consider film exhibition sites in schools, businesses, and industries. As they expand understanding of this other American cinema, the contributors challenge preconceived notions about what cinema is. Contributors. Charles R. Acland, Joseph Clark, Zoë Druick, Ronald Walter Greene, Alison Griffiths, Stephen Groening, Jennifer Horne, Kirsten Ostherr, Eric Smoodin, Charles Tepperman, Gregory A. Waller, Haidee Wasson. Michael Zryd

George Kleine was a New York City optician who moved to Chicago in 1893 to set up an optical store. In 1896 he branched out and began selling motion picture equipment and films. Within a few years he becameAmerica's largest film distributor and a pivotal figure in the movie business. In chronicling the career of this motion picture pioneer – including his rapid rise to fame and fortune, but also his gradual downfall after 1915 as the era of Hollywood began – Joel Frykholm provides an in-depth account of the emergence of the motion picture business in the United States and its development throughout the silent era. Through the lens of Kleine's fascinating career, this book explores how motion pictures gradually transformed from a novelty into an economic and cultural institution central to both American life and an increasingly globalised culture of mass entertainment.

The potential of films to educate has been crucial for the development of cinema intended to influence culture, and is as important as conceptions of film as a form of art, science, industry, or entertainment. Using the concept of institutionalization as a heuristic for generating new approaches to the history of educational cinema, contributors to this volume study the co-evolving discourses, cultural practices, technical standards, and institutional frameworks that transformed educational cinema from a convincing idea into an enduring genre. The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema examines the methods of production, distribution, and exhibition established for the use of educational films within institutions–such as schools, libraries, and industrial settings in various national and international contexts and takes a close look at the networks of organizations, individuals, and government agencies that were created as a result of these films' circulation. Through case studies of educational cinemas in different North American and European countries that explore various modes of institutionalization of educational film, this book highlights the wide range of vested interests that framed the birth of educational and nontheatrical cinema.

The vast and influential American military has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The army, navy, and air force put films to work in myriad ways, enlisting them to entertain, train, and heal soldiers as well as to propagandize, strategize, spy, map, and develop weapons, from rifles to atomic bombs. Presenting new essays based on archival research, Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex addresses the relationship of military cinema to Hollywood, technological innovation, new modes of filmmaking, unique film styles and genres, and the rise of American soft power across the long twentieth century. This rich and timely volume is essential for scholars interested in the military’s use of media and the exercise of influence within and beyond American borders.

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This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian history and popular culture. It examines partition's impact on cultural production, based on hard to access archives and collections situated in India, Pakistan, United Kingdom and the United States.

A Companion to Nordic Cinema presents a collection of original essays that explore one of the world’s oldest regional cinemas from its origins to the present day. Offers a comprehensive, transnational and regional account of Nordic cinema from its origins to the present day Features original contributions from more than two dozen international film scholars based in the Nordic countries, the United States, Canada, Scotland, and Hong Kong Covers a wide range of topics on the distinctive evolution of Nordic cinema including the silent Golden Age, Nordic film policy models and their influence, audiences and cinephilia, Nordic film training, and indigenous Sámi cinema. Considers Nordic cinema’s engagement with global audiences through coverage of such topics as Dogme 95, the avant-garde filmmaking movement begun by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and the global marketing and distribution of Nordic horror and Nordic noir Offers fresh investigations of the work of global auteurs such as Carl Th. Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Lars von Trier, Aki Kaurismäki, and Roy Andersson. Includes essays on Danish and Swedish television dramas, Finland’s eco-documentary film production, the emerging tradition of Icelandic cinema, the changing dynamics of Scandinavian porn, and many more

Politicised Cinema demonstrates how taking a collection of seemingly apolitical films and using them as an instrument for serving explicit political aims can be used as a force for good. Through an analysis of Orient: A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture, a film catalogue published by UNESCO and the BFI in 1959 to promote intercultural understanding between the East and the West, this book argues for the importance of studying the ways the interpretation of films can be guided to serve a specific political agenda, even when the films themselves were originally produced with very different aims in mind. The author focuses on how the catalogue positions culture and its cinematic representations as a marker of difference between the Eastern and Western worlds, and shows that even major cultural conflicts such as the Cold War and the decolonisation process can be reframed in service of UNESCO’s cultural diplomatic agenda. The book explores the ways in which the catalogue of Eastern films deemed suitable for Western audiences became a weapon to fight against prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry in a politicised battle over dismantling the proclaimed link between difference and conflict. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and academics in visual politics, cinematic international relations, cultural diplomacy, global governance, and international cultural politics, as well as film studies, Asian studies, and cultural studies. In addition, policymakers and practitioners in the fields of cultural diplomacy and cultural policy will find the empirical case study to be of use in practical work.