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The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema
Author
Title
The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema [electronic resource] / by Murray Leeder.
ISBN
9781137583710
Publication
London : Palgrave Macmillan UK : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Physical Description
XII, 209 p. 21 illus., 1 illus. in color : online resource.
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
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Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
This study sees the nineteenth century supernatural as a significant context for cinema’s first years. The book takes up the familiar notion of cinema as a “ghostly,” “spectral” or “haunted” medium and asks what made such association possible. Examining the history of the projected image and supernatural displays, psychical research and telepathy, spirit photography and X-rays, the skeletons of the danse macabre and the ghostly spaces of the mind, it uncovers many lost and fascinating connections. The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema locates film’s spectral affinities within a history stretching back to the beginning of screen practice and forward to the digital era. In addition to examining the use of supernatural themes by pioneering filmmakers like Georges Méliès and George Albert Smith, it also engages with the representations of cinema’s ghostly past in Guy Maddin’s recent online project Seances (2016). It is ideal for those interested in the history of cinema, the study of the supernatural and the pre-history of the horror film.
Variant and related titles
Springer ebooks.
Other formats
Printed edition:
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
February 02, 2017
Contents
1.Introduction
2. The Haunting of Film Theory
3. Light and Lies: Screen Practice and (Super-) Natural Magic
4. The Strange Case of George Albert Smith: Mesmerism, Psychical Research and Cinema
5. Aesthetics of Co-Registration: Spirit Photography, X-Rays and Cinema
6. Méliès’s Skeleton: Gender, Cinema’s Danse Macabre and the Erotics of Bone
7. Living Pictures at Will: Projecting Haunted Minds
8. Conclusion: Lost Worlds, Ghost Worlds. .
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