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Devices of curiosity : early cinema and popular science / Oliver Gaycken.
Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.S265 G39 2015
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Gaycken, Oliver, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Science in motion pictures.
- Science films--History and criticism.
- Science films.
- Motion pictures in science.
- Genre:
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 254 pages ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2015]
- Summary:
- Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers began making films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. Excavating this largely unknown genre of early cinema, Devices of Curiosity traces its development from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. Oliver Gaycken investigates how such films both relied upon previous traditions and created novel visual paradigms that led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. Gaycken also discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. Drawing on the insights of the history of science as well as the history of cinema, Devices of Curiosity reveals the extent to which popular-science films impacted the formation of documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Prologue: Where did these scorpions come from?
- "Revealing nature's closest secrets": F. Martin Duncan's popular-science films at the Charles Urban Trading Company
- Juggling flies and gravid plants: F. Percy Smith's early popular-science films
- "A drama unites them in a fight to the death": the flourishing of popular-science films in France, 1909-1914
- A modern cabinet of curiosities: George Kleine's collection of popular-science films
- Popular science and crime melodrama: Louis Feuillade and the serial
- Conclusion: Round and round: from the somersaulting monkey to "bug workout".
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780199860685
- 0199860688
- 9780199860708
- 019986070X
- OCLC:
- 890792821
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