In the silent era, American cinema was defined by two separate and parallel industries, with white and black companies producing films for their respective, segregated audiences. Jane Gaines's highly anticipated new book reconsiders the race films of this era with an ambitious historical and theoretical agenda.
"Fire and Desire" offers a penetrating look at the black independent film movement during the silent period. Gaines traces the profound influence that D. W. Griffith's racist epic "The Birth of a Nation" exerted on black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, the director of the newly recovered "Within Our Gates." Beginning with "What Happened in the Tunnel," a movie that played with race and sex taboos by featuring the first interracial kiss in film, Gaines also explores the cinematic constitution of self and other through surprise encounters: James Baldwin sees himself in the face of Bette Davis, family resemblance is read in Richard S. Robert's portrait of an interracial family, and black film pioneer George P. Johnson looks back on Micheaux.
Given the impossibility of purity and the co-implication of white and black, "Fire and Desire" ultimately questions the category of "race movies" itself.

Research into and around women's participation in cinematic history has enjoyed dynamic growth over the past decade. A broadening of scope and interests encompasses not only different kinds of filmmaking--mainstream fiction, experimental, and documentary--but also practices--publicity, journalism, distribution and exhibition--seldom explored in the past. Cutting-edge and inclusive, Doing Women's Film History ventures into topics in the United States and Europe while also moving beyond to explore the influence of women on the cinemas of India, Chile, Turkey, Russia, and Australia. Contributors grapple with historiographic questions that cover film history from the pioneering era to the present day. Yet the writers also address the very mission of practicing scholarship. Essays explore essential issues like identifying women's participation in their cinema cultures, locating previously unconsidered sources of evidence, developing methodologies and analytical concepts to reveal the impact of gender on film production, distribution and reception, and reframing film history to accommodate new questions and approaches. Contributors include: Kay Armatage, Eylem Atakav, Karina Aveyard, Canan Balan, Cecile Chich, Monica Dall'Asta, Eliza Anna Delveroudi, Jane M. Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Julia Knight, Neepa Majumdar, Michele Leigh, Luke McKernan, Debashree Mukherjee, Giuliana Muscio, Katarzyna Paszkiewicz, Rashmi Sawhney, Elizabeth Ramirez Soto, Sarah Street, and Kimberly Tomadjoglou.

A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what" we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers the implications of this social and cultural history through an analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel, Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.

Research into and around women's participation in cinematic history has enjoyed dynamic growth over the past decade. A broadening of scope and interests encompasses not only different kinds of filmmaking--mainstream fiction, experimental, and documentary--but also practices--publicity, journalism, distribution and exhibition--seldom explored in the past. Cutting-edge and inclusive, Doing Women's Film History ventures into topics in the United States and Europe while also moving beyond to explore the influence of women on the cinemas of India, Chile, Turkey, Russia, and Australia. Contributors grapple with historiographic questions that cover film history from the pioneering era to the present day. Yet the writers also address the very mission of practicing scholarship. Essays explore essential issues like identifying women's participation in their cinema cultures, locating previously unconsidered sources of evidence, developing methodologies and analytical concepts to reveal the impact of gender on film production, distribution and reception, and reframing film history to accommodate new questions and approaches. Contributors include: Kay Armatage, Eylem Atakav, Karina Aveyard, Canan Balan, Cecile Chich, Monica Dall'Asta, Eliza Anna Delveroudi, Jane M. Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Julia Knight, Neepa Majumdar, Michele Leigh, Luke McKernan, Debashree Mukherjee, Giuliana Muscio, Katarzyna Paszkiewicz, Rashmi Sawhney, Elizabeth Ramirez Soto, Sarah Street, and Kimberly Tomadjoglou.

This provocative book examines the phenomenon of images as property, specifically mechanically produced visual and audio images from popular culture. By looking at legal texts - such as judicial opinions and stars' contracts - as cultural artifacts in their own right, and by offering a poststructualist analysis of these texts, Jane Gaines explores not only the legal but the cultural status of these icons. She discusses such legal questions as individual authorship of an image versus its corporate ownership and the right to privacy versus the right to publicity.

Women held more positions of power in the silent film era than at any other time in American motion picture history. Marion Leonard broke from acting to cofound a feature film company. Gene Gauntier, the face of Kalem Films, also wrote the first script of Ben-Hur. Helen Holmes choreographed her own breathtaking on-camera stunt work. Yet they and the other pioneering filmmaking women vanished from memory. Using individual careers as a point of departure, Jane M. Gaines charts how women first fell out of the limelight and then out of the film history itself. A more perplexing event cemented their obscurity: the failure of 1970s feminist historiography to rediscover them. Gaines examines how it happened against a backdrop of feminist theory and her own meditation on the limits that historiography imposes on scholars. Pondering how silent era women have become absent in the abstract while present in reality, Gaines sees a need for a theory of these artists' pasts that relates their aspirations to those of contemporary women. A bold journey through history and memory, Pink-Slipped pursues the still-elusive fate of the influential women in the early years of film.

A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what" we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers the implications of this social and cultural history through an analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel, Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.

Since the 1970s film studies has been dominated by a basic paradigm--the concept of classical Hollywood cinema--that is, the protagonist-driven narrative, valued for the way it achieves closure by neatly answering all of the enigmas it raises. It has been held to be a form so powerful that its aesthetic devices reinforce gender positions in society. In a variety of ways, the essays collected here--representing the work of some of the most innovative theorists writing today--challenge this paradigm.
Significantly expanded from a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring 1989), these essays confront the extent to which formalism has continued to dominate film theory, reexamine the role of melodrama in cinematic development, revise notions of patriarchal cinema, and assert the importance of television and video to cinema studies. A range of topics are discussed, from the films of D. W. Griffith to sexuality in avant-garde film to television's Dynasty.
Classical Hollywood Narrative invites students of film, television, and video to reevaluate the basic tenets of the field and introduces film studies to literary scholars.
Contributors. Rick Altman, Richard Dienst, Jane Feuer, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Miriam Hansen, Norman N. Holland, Fredric Jameson, Bill Nichols, Janey Staiger, Chris Straayer, John O. Thompson

Women held more positions of power in the silent film era than at any other time in American motion picture history. Marion Leonard broke from acting to cofound a feature film company. Gene Gauntier, the face of Kalem Films, also wrote the first script of Ben-Hur. Helen Holmes choreographed her own breathtaking on-camera stunt work. Yet they and the other pioneering filmmaking women vanished from memory. Using individual careers as a point of departure, Jane M. Gaines charts how women first fell out of the limelight and then out of the film history itself. A more perplexing event cemented their obscurity: the failure of 1970s feminist historiography to rediscover them. Gaines examines how it happened against a backdrop of feminist theory and her own meditation on the limits that historiography imposes on scholars. Pondering how silent era women have become absent in the abstract while present in reality, Gaines sees a need for a theory of these artists' pasts that relates their aspirations to those of contemporary women. A bold journey through history and memory, Pink-Slipped pursues the still-elusive fate of the influential women in the early years of film.

This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, she created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her own film company, Solax. From 1914 to 1920, Guy Blache was an independent director for a number of film companies. Despite her immensely productive and creative career, Guy Blache's indispensable contribution to film history has been overlooked. She entered the world of filmmaking at its nascent stage, when films were seen primarily as a medium in the service of science or as an adjunct to selling cameras. Working with Gaumont cameramen and cameras and the new technical advances for the projection of film, she became one of the film pioneers ushering in the new era of motion pictures as a narrative form. Written by cinema history experts and curators, this handsome volume brings to light a critical new mass of Guy Blache's film oeuvre in an effort to restore her to her rightful place in film history. Published in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (11/6/09 - 1/24/10)