Soundies Jukebox Films And The Shift To Small Screen Culture

Author : Andrea J. Kelley
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813586356
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-Screen Culture written by Andrea J. Kelley and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-Screen Culture is the first and only book to position what are called “Soundies” within the broader cultural and technological milieu of the 1940s. From 1940 to 1946, these musical films circulated in everyday venues, including bars, bowling alleys, train stations, hospitals, and even military bases. Viewers would pay a dime to watch them playing on the small screens of the Panoram jukebox. This book expands U.S. film history beyond both Hollywood and institutional film practices. Examining the dynamics between Soundies’ short musical films, the Panoram’s film-jukebox technology, their screening spaces and their popular discourse, Andrea J. Kelley provides an integrative approach to historic media exhibition. She situates the material conditions of Soundies’ screening sites alongside formal considerations of the films and their unique politics of representation to illuminate a formative moment in the history of the small screen.

Author : Andrea Kelley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780813586366
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-screen Culture written by Andrea Kelley and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-Screen Culture is the first and only book to position what are called "Soundies" within the broader cultural and technological milieu of the 1940s. From 1940 to 1946, these musical films circulated in everyday venues, including bars, bowling alleys, train stations, hospitals, and even military bases. Viewers would pay a dime to watch them playing on the small screens of the Panoram jukebox. This book expands U.S. film history beyond both Hollywood and institutional film practices. Examining the dynamics between Soundies' short musical films, the Panoram's film-jukebox technology, their screening spaces and their popular discourse, Andrea J. Kelley provides an integrative approach to historic media exhibition. She situates the material conditions of Soundies' screening sites alongside formal considerations of the films and their unique politics of representation to illuminate a formative moment in the history of the small screen.

Author : Andrea Kelley
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 081358633X
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-Screen Culture written by Andrea Kelley and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first and only book to position what are called "Soundies" within the broader cultural and technological milieu of the 1940s. Examining the dynamics between Soundies' short musical films, the Panoram's film-jukebox technology, their screening spaces and their popular discourse, Kelley provides an integrative approach to historic media exhibition.

Author : Susan Delson
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253058562
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen written by Susan Delson and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1940s, folks at bars and restaurants would gather around a Panoram movie machine to watch three-minute films called Soundies, precursors to today's music videos. This history was all but forgotten until the digital era brought Soundies to phones and computer screens—including a YouTube clip starring a 102-year-old Harlem dancer watching her younger self perform in Soundies. In Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, Susan Delson takes a deeper look at these fascinating films by focusing on the role of Black performers in this little-known genre. She highlights the women performers, like Dorothy Dandridge, who helped shape Soundies, while offering an intimate look at icons of the age, such as Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. Using previously unknown archival materials—including letters, corporate memos, and courtroom testimony—to trace the precarious path of Soundies, Delson presents an incisive pop-culture snapshot of race relations during and just after World War II. Perfect for readers interested in film, American history, the World War II era, and Black entertainment history, Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen and its companion video website (susandelson.com) bring the important contributions of these Black artists into the spotlight once again.

Author : Haidee Wasson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520291514
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Cinema's Military Industrial Complex written by Haidee Wasson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast, and vastly influential, American military machine has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The US military realized very quickly that film could be used in myriad ways: training, testing, surveying and mapping, surveillance, medical and psychological management of soldiers, and of course, propaganda. Bringing together a collection of new essays, based on archival research, Wasson and Grieveson seek to cover the complex history of how the military deployed cinema for varied purposes across the the long twentieth century, from the incipient wars of US imperialism in the late nineteenth century to the ongoing War on Terror. This engagement includes cinema created and used by and for the military itself (such as training films), the codevelopment of technologies (chemical, mechanical, and digital), and the use of film (and related mass media) as a key aspect of American "soft power," at home and around the world. A rich and timely set of essays, this volume will become a go-to for scholars interested in all aspects of how the military creates and uses moving-image media.

Author : Susie Trenka
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0861969782
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Jumping the Color Line written by Susie Trenka and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first synchronized sound films of the late 1920s through the end of World War II, African American music and dance styles were ubiquitous in films. Black performers, however, were marginalized, mostly limited to appearing in "specialty acts" and various types of short films, whereas stardom was reserved for Whites. Jumping the Color Line discusses vernacular jazz dance in film as a focal point of American race relations. Looking at intersections of race, gender, and class, the book examines how the racialized and gendered body in film performs, challenges, and negotiates identities and stereotypes. Arguing for the transformative and subversive potential of jazz dance performance onscreen, the six chapters address a variety of films and performers, including many that have received little attention to date. Topics include Hollywood's first Black female star (Nina Mae McKinney), male tap dance "class acts" in Black-cast short films of the early 1930s, the film career of Black tap soloist Jeni LeGon, the role of dance in the Soundies jukebox shorts of the 1940s, cinematic images of the Lindy hop, and a series of teen films from the early 1940s that appealed primarily to young White fans of swing culture. With a majority of examples taken from marginal film forms, such as shorts and B movies, the book highlights their role in disseminating alternative images of racial and gender identities as embodied by dancers – images that were at least partly at odds with those typically found in major Hollywood productions.

Author : Patrick Keating
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 197881027X
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Film Noir and the Arts of Lighting written by Patrick Keating and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-12 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other set of films from the classical era, the Hollywood film noir is known for its lighting: the cast shadows, the blinking street signs, the eyes sparkling in the darkness. Each effect is rich in symbolism, evoking a world of danger and doppelgangers. But what happens if we set aside the symbolism? This book offers a new account of film noir lighting, grounded in a larger theory of Hollywood cinematography as emotionally engaging storytelling. Above all, noir lighting is dynamic, switching from darkness to brightness and back again as characters change, locations shift, and fates unfold. Richly illustrated, Film Noir and the Arts of Lighting features in-depth analyses of eleven classic movies: The Asphalt Jungle, Sorry, Wrong Number, Odds against Tomorrow, The Letter, I Wake Up Screaming, Phantom Lady, Strangers on a Train, Sweet Smell of Success, Gaslight, Secret beyond the Door, and Touch of Evil.

Author : Haidee Wasson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520974379
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Everyday Movies written by Haidee Wasson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday Movies documents the twentieth-century rise of portable film projectors. It demonstrates that since World War II, the vast majority of movie-watching did not happen in the glow of the large screen but rather took place alongside the glitches, distortions, and clickety-clack of small machines that transformed home, classroom, museum, community, government, industrial, and military venues into sites of moving-image display. Reorienting the history of cinema away from the magic of the movie theater, Haidee Wasson illustrates the remarkable persistence and proliferation of devices that fundamentally rejected the sleek, highly professionalized film show. She foregrounds instead another kind of apparatus, one that was accessible, affordable, adaptable, easy to use, and crucially, programmable. Revealing rich archival discoveries, this book charts a compelling and original history of film that brings to light new technologies and diverse forms of media engagement that continue to shape contemporary life.

Author : Thomas Gustafson
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978838042
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book American Anti-Pastoral written by Thomas Gustafson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the best-known novels taking place in New Jersey, Philip Roth’s 1997 American Pastoral uses the fictional hamlet of Old Rimrock, NJ as a microcosm for a nation in crisis during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s-70s. Critics have called Old Rimrock mythic, but it is based on a very real place: the small Morris county town of Brookside, New Jersey. American Anti-Pastoral reads the events in Roth’s novel in relation to the history of Brookside and its region. While Roth’s protagonist Seymour “Swede” Levov initially views Old Rimrock as an idyllic paradise within the Garden State, its real-world counterpart has a more complex past in its origins as a small industrial village, as well as a site for the politics of exclusionary zoning and a 1960s anti-war protest at its celebrated 4th of July parade. Literary historian and Brookside native Thomas Gustafson casts Roth’s canonical novel in a fresh light as he studies both Old Rimrock in comparison to Brookside and the novel in relationship to NJ literature, making a case for it as the Great New Jersey novel. For Roth fans and history buffs alike, American Anti-Pastoral peels back the myths about the bucolic Garden State countryside to reveal deep fissures along the fault-lines of race and religion in American democracy.

Author : Steven Rybin
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978815964
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Playful Frames written by Steven Rybin and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A widescreen frame in cinema beckons the eye to playfully, creatively roam. Such technology also gives inventive filmmakers room to disrupt and redirect audience expectations, surprising viewers through the use of a wider, more expansive screen. Playful Frames: Styles of Widescreen Cinema studies the poetics of the auteur-driven widescreen image, offering nimble, expansive analyses of the work of four distinctive filmmakers – Jean Negulesco, Blake Edwards, Robert Altman, and John Carpenter – who creatively inhabited the nooks and crannies of widescreen moviemaking during the final decades of the twentieth century. Exploring the relationship between aspect ratio and subject matter, Playful Frames shows how directors make puckish use of widescreen technology. All four of these distinctive filmmakers reimagined popular genres (such as melodrama, slapstick comedy, film noir, science fiction, and horror cinema) through their use of the wide frame, and each brings a range of intermedial interests (painting, performance, and music) to their use of the widescreen image. This study looks specifically at the technological underpinnings, aesthetic shapes, and interpretive implications of these four directors’ creative use of widescreen, offering a way to reconsider the way wide imagery still has the potential to amaze and move us today.