This fascinating study of early cinema in the Netherlands Indies explores the influences of new media technology on colonial society. The Komedi Bioscoop traces the emergence of a local culture of movie-going in the Netherlands Indies (present-day Indonesia) from 1896 until 1914. It outlines the introduction of the new technology by independent touring exhibitors, the constitution of a market for moving picture shows, the embedding of moving picture exhibitions within the local popular entertainment scene, and the Dutch colonial authorities’ efforts to control film consumption and distribution. Dafna Ruppin focuses on the cinema as a social institution in which technology, race, and colonialism converged. In her illuminating study, moving picture venues in the Indies—ranging from canvas or bamboo tents to cinema palaces of brick and stone—are perceived as liminal spaces in which daily interactions across boundaries could occur within colonial Indonesia’s multi-ethnic and increasingly polarized colonial society.

In this book, editors Mario Slugan and Daniël Biltereyst present a theoretical reconceptualization of early cinema. To do so, they highlight the latest methods and tools for analysis, and cast new light on the experience of early cinema through the application of these concepts and methods. The international host of contributors evaluate examples of early cinema across the globe, including The May Irwin Kiss (1896), Un homme de têtes (1900), The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904) and Tom Tom the Piper's Son (1905). In doing so, they address the periodization of the era, emphasizing the recent boon in the availability of primary materials, the rise of digital technologies, the developments in new cinema history, and the persistence of some conceptualizations as key incentives for rethinking early cinema in theoretical and methodological terms. They go on to highlight cutting-edge approaches to the study of early cinema, including the use of the Mediathread Platform, the formation of new datasets with the help of digital technologies, and exploring the early era in non-western cultures. Finally, the contributors revisit early cinema audiences and exhibition contexts by investigating some of the earliest screenings in Denmark and the US, exploring the details of black cinema going in Harlem, and examining exhibition practices in Germany.

An essential guide to understanding the issues which characterize post-colonialism. A comprehensive glossary has extensive cross-referencing, a bibliography of essential writings and an easy-to-use A-Z format.

Remnants of early films often have a story to tell. As material artifacts, these film fragments are central to cinema history, perhaps more than ever in our digital age of easy copying and sharing. If a digital copy is previewed before preservation or is shared with a researcher outside the purview of a film archive, knowledge about how the artifact was collected, circulated, and repurposed threatens to become obscured. When the question of origin is overlooked, the story can be lost. Concerned contributors in Provenance and Early Cinema challenge scholars digging through film archives to ask, "How did these moving images get here for me to see them?" This volume, which features the conference proceedings from Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, 2018, questions preservation, attribution, and patterns of reuse in order to explore singular artifacts with long and circuitous lives.

Early Cinema in Asia explores how cinema became a popular medium in the world's largest and most diverse continent. Beginning with the end of Asia's colonial period in the 19th century, contributors to this volume document the struggle by pioneering figures to introduce the medium of film to the vast continent, overcoming geographic, technological, and cultural difficulties. As an early form of globalization, film's arrival and phenomenal growth throughout various Asian countries penetrated not only colonial territories but also captivated collective states of imagination. With the coming of the 20th century, the medium that began as mere entertainment became a means for communicating many of the cultural identities of the region's ethnic nationalities, as they turned their favorite pastime into an expression of their cherished national cultures. Covering diverse locations, including China, India, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Iran, and the countries of the Pacific Islands, contributors to this volume reveal the story of early cinema in Asia, helping us to understand the first seeds of a medium that has since grown deep roots in the region.