The Past Is A Moving Picture

by Jones, Janna

• ISBN13: 9780813041926
• ISBN10: 0813041929
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

Almost all remnants of culture-past and present-degrade over time, whether sculpture or scrolls, painting or papyrus, books or clay tablets. Perhaps no major cultural record dissolves more rapidly than film, arguably the predominant medium of the twentieth century. Given the fragility of early nitrate film, much has already been lost. The fragments that remain-whether complete prints of theatrical releases or scraps of everyday life captured by Thomas Edison-only hint at what has disappeared. More recently, archives have been flooded with so much material that they lack the funds to properly preserve it all. Both situations raise questions about how film archives shape our understanding of history and culture. Janna Jones provides a stunning, tour-de-force analysis of the major assumptions and paradigmatic shifts about history, cinema, and the moving image archive, one that we ignore at our peril in the midst of the overwhelming rush toward digitization. No student of film, twentieth-century history, or archiving and preservation can afford to miss The Past Is a Moving Picture.

Author Biography

Janna Jones is professor in the School of Communication at Northern Arizona University and the author of The Southern Movie Palace: Rise, Fall, and Resurrection.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Archives in Formation
What to Show the World	p. 25
Accessibility, Authenticity, and Anxiety	p. 52
Film Preservation 1993: Orphans and the Culture Wars	p. 83
Archival Techne
The Archive at the End of the Century: Discipline, Excess, and Access	p. 111
Film Restoration: A New Way of Seeing Film History	p. 137
Conclusion	p. 167
Notes	p. 177
Bibliography	p. 187
Index	p. 191
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