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Flickering Empire tells the fascinating yet little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of American film production in the years before the rise of Hollywood (1907–1913). As entertaining as it is informative, Flickering Empire straddles the worlds of academic and popular nonfiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures, including Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles, are major players in the narrative—in addition to important though forgotten industry titans, such as "Colonel" William Selig, George Spoor, and Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson.
After taking a summer job with a Chicago ghost tour company, eighteen-year-old Megan is interrogated for murder when the reports of "real" ghost sightings increase--along with the number of missing tourists.
In The Othering of Women in Silent Film: Cultural, Historical, and Literary Contexts, Barbara Tepa Lupackexplores the rampant racial and gender stereotyping depicted in early cinema, demonstrating how those stereotypes helped shape American attitudes and practices. Using social, cultural, literary, and cinema history as a focus, this book offers insights into issues of Othering, including discrimination, exclusion, and sexism, that are as timely today as they were a century ago. Lupack not only examines the ways that dominant cinema of the era imprinted indelible and pejorative images of women—including African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and New Women/Suffragists—but also reveals the ways in which a number of pioneering early filmmakers and performers attempted to counter those depictions by challenging the imagery, interrogating the stereotypes, and re-politicizing the familiar narratives. Scholars of film, gender, history, and race studies will find this book of particular interest.
American police departments have presided over the business of motion pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made, promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police explores the history of film's entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium. For the New Jersey State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means of making the agency world-famous as early as 1896....
Thirty-eight chapters by an outstanding international team of scholars. Accessible overviews of the history and legacy of the visual storytelling medium. Covering major themes and works from a global perspective. Book jacket.
"Every day is the anniversary of some historical or cultural moment in the great city of Chicago. Whether it's the dedication of the Pablo Picasso sculpture downtown on August 15, or the arrest of Rod Blagojevich at his Ravenswood home on December 9, or a fire that possibly involved a cow on October 8, each day is redolent with the power of the past. Here, acerbic Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg takes us on a tour of the year, illuminating the famous, obscure, tragic, and hilarious elements that make each day in Chicago one to remember"--
14. "Taking New Heart": Organized Labor and the Postwar Strikes -- 15. "Eyes to the Future": Chicago in 1919 -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover
This investigation into the little-known genre of mission-oriented films uncovers how Protestant missionaries overseas sought to bring back motion picture footage from remote parts of the world. In the broader religious community, mission films aimed to educate congregants back home about efforts to evangelize communities around the world. This book, however, demonstrates the larger impact of mission films on American visual culture. The evolution and development of the genre is highlighted from an early emphasis on "foreign views" in the 1910s, to interwar films providing a more detailed look at how mission stations functioned in far-flung lands, to Cold War productions which at times functioned as veritable propaganda tools parroting anti-communist discourse emanating from the CIA.
Hoping to earn money so that he and his mother will not have to move, Daniel goes around the neighborhood trying to sell a box of Christmas ornaments, including one with a special message.