Ebook: Early Cinema and the "National"

When, where, and how did motion pictures become a national phenomenon or part and parcel of a national culture? What conceptions of nation were bound up with early cinema? Is early cinema best understood in global or transnational terms? While many studies have been written on national cinemas, "Early Cinema and the "National"" is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices (both local and global), and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated, landmark anthology are all devoted to rethinking the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. As many of the thirty-four contributors show, concepts of national identity played a role in establishing many of the parameters of cinema's early development, from technological change to discourses of stardom, from emerging genres to inter-titling practices. Yet, as others attest, national meanings could often become knotty in other contexts, when concepts of nationhood were contested in relation to colonial/imperial histories and regional configurations. The relationship between cinema and the concept of nation has been challenged by multi-national capitalism, and Early Cinema and the "National" takes stock of an earlier moment in cinema history, tracing the beginnings of the process whereby nations learned to imagine themselves through moving images.