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This is an account of the prehistory and early years of cinema in
Britain. In this new paperback edition, which has been revised to
take into account recent scholarship of early cinema, the author
provides an account of the rich history of the origins of film. The
book demonstrates that the theory of "the persistence of vision",
which led to the invention of moving pictures, has been superceded
by modern scientific findings. In its place, it puts forward a
theory of invention as a type of "bricolage", and shows that
cinematography was a product of the forces of 19th century
capitalism. It discusses the wealth of influences, both popular and
bourgeois, on the culture of early cinema, including diorama, the
magic lantern, itinerant entertainers and music hall. The book
looks at the relationship between film and photography, and
considers the nascent film business, the ways in which early cinema
was received by its audiences and the developing aesthetics of
cinema in its first 15 years.
For mainstream economics, cultural production raises no special
questions: creative expression is to be harvested for wealth
creation like any other form of labour. As Karl Marx saw it,
however, capital is hostile to the arts because it cannot fully
control the process of creativity. But while he saw the arts as
marginal to capital accumulation, that was before the birth of the
mass media. Engaging with the major issues in Marxist theory around
art and capitalism, From Printing to Streaming traces how the logic
of cultural capitalism evolved from the print age to digital times,
tracking the development of printing, photography, sound recording,
newsprint, advertising, film and broadcasting, exploring the
peculiarities of each as commodities, and their recent
transformation by digital technology, where everything melts into
computer code. Showing how these developments have had profound
implications for both cultural creation and consumption, Chanan
offers a radical and comprehensive analysis of the commodification
of artistic creation and the struggle to realise its potential in
the digital age.
The Dream the Kicks is a classic account of the prehistory and
early years of cinema in Britain. In this new paperback edition,
which has been thoroughly revised to take into account recent
scholarship of early cinema, Michael Chanan provides a fasciniating
account of the rich and hitherto hidden history of the origins of
film. Chanan demonstrates that the theory of `the persistence of
vision', which led to the invention of moving pictures, has been
superceded by modern scientific findings. In its place, he puts
forward a theory of invention as a type of bricolage, and shows
that cinematography was a product of the forces of nineteenth
century capitalism. He discusses the wealth of influences, both
popular and bourgeois, on the culture of early cinema, including
diorama, the magic lantern, itinerant entertainers and music hall.
He looks at the relationship between film and photography, and
considers the nascent film business, the ways in which early cinema
was received by its audiences and the developing aesthetics of
cinema in its first fifteen years.
For mainstream economics, cultural production raises no special
questions: creative expression is to be harvested for wealth
creation like any other form of labour. As Karl Marx saw it,
however, capital is hostile to the arts because it cannot fully
control the process of creativity. But while he saw the arts as
marginal to capital accumulation, that was before the birth of the
mass media. Engaging with the major issues in Marxist theory around
art and capitalism, From Printing to Streaming traces how the logic
of cultural capitalism evolved from the print age to digital times,
tracking the development of printing, photography, sound recording,
newsprint, advertising, film and broadcasting, exploring the
peculiarities of each as commodities, and their recent
transformation by digital technology, where everything melts into
computer code. Showing how these developments have had profound
implications for both cultural creation and consumption, Chanan
offers a radical and comprehensive analysis of the commodification
of artistic creation and the struggle to realise its potential in
the digital age.
Tracing the history of the documentary from the first Lumiere films
to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," Chanan addresses topics such
as the documentary before documentary, how documentary film
language works, the veracity of the image, the problems of the
soundtrack, the migration of documentary to television, political
documentary, censorship, first-person film-making, and the
relations of the archives to history and memory. Focusing on the
vital contribution of documentary to the public sphere--the space
in which ideas are debated, public opinion is formed and those in
authority are held to account--Chanan argues that, without
documentary, the public sphere is unable to function.
Tracing the history of the documentary from the first Lumiere films
to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," Chanan addresses topics such
as the documentary before documentary, how documentary film
language works, the veracity of the image, the problems of the
soundtrack, the migration of documentary to television, political
documentary, censorship, first-person film-making, and the
relations of the archives to history and memory. Focusing on the
vital contribution of documentary to the public sphere--the space
in which ideas are debated, public opinion is formed and those in
authority are held to account--Chanan argues that, without
documentary, the public sphere is unable to function.
Memories of Underdevelopment was the first great international
success of Cuban cinema. The film provides a complex portrait of
Sergio, a disaffected bourgeois intellectual who remains in Havana
after the Revolution, suspended between two worlds. He can no
longer accept the values of his family's reactionary past and yet
boredom and the conditioning of his early life prevent him from
committing himself to the new revolutionary society. Sergio's story
is played out in the turbulent period of the Bay of Pigs invasion
and the 1962 missile crisis, events he can only watch on his
television screen or from his apartment balcony. The film,
initially banned by the U.S. government as part of its trade
quarantine of Cuba, was shown here five years after its original
release. But American critics responded enthusiastically to it and
the National Society of Film Critics bestowed an award on its
director. This double volume includes the complete continuity
script of Memories, as well as the complete novel, Inconsolable
Memories, upon which the film is based. An interview with Alea is
reproduced here, as well as documentation of the political
controversy that surrounded the film in this country. Michael
Chanan's introduction places the film in the context of Cuban
political and cultural history. The volume also includes a
biographical sketch of Alea, a chronology of the Cuban Revolution,
reviews, commentary, a filmography, and a bibliography. Michael
Chanan lives in England, where he teaches and writes on film. He is
the author of The Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in
Cuba.
Repeated Takes is the first general book on the history of the
recording industry, covering the entire field from Edison's talking
tin foil of 1877 to the age of the compact disc. Michael Chanan
considers the record as a radically new type of commodity which
turned the intangible performance of music into a saleable object,
and describes the upset which this caused in musical culture. He
asks: What goes on in a recording studio? How does it affect the
music? Do we listen to music differently because of reproduction?
Repeated Takes relates the growth and development of the industry,
both technically and economically; the effects of the microphone on
interpretation in both classical and popular music; and the impact
of all these factors on musical styles and taste. This highly
readable book also traces the connections between the development
of recording and the rise of new forms of popular music, and
discusses arguments among classical musicians about microphone
technique and studio practice.
"Musica Practica" is a historical investigation into the social
practice of Western music which advances an alternative approach to
that of established musicology. Citing evidence from Barthes,
Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Max Weber and Schoenberg, Michael Chanan
explores the communal roots of the musical tradition and the
effects of notation on creative and performing practice. He
appraises the psychological wellsprings of music using the insights
of linguistics, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Tracing the growth of
musical printing and the creation of a market for the printed
score, he examines the transformation of patronage with the demise
of the "ancien regime," and draws on little-known texts by Marx to
analyze the formation of the musical economy in the nineteenth
century.
Chanan sketches out an unwritten history of musical instruments as
technology, from Tutankhamen's trumpets to the piano, the ancient
Greek water organ to the digital synthesizer. The book concludes
with reflections on the rise of modernism and the dissolution of
the European tradition in a sea of postmodernism and "world music."
"Musica Practica" assumes no specialist knowledge of music beyond
an ordinary familiarity with common terms and an average
acquaintance with the music of different styles and periods. It is
a fascinating commentary on the soundtrack of daily life in the
metropolis of the late twentieth century.
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