Originally issued in hardcover in 1996 by Garland Publishing, this important reference work is now available in paperback for a wider audience. A distinguished team of contributors has compiled entries on 140 significant South American feature films from the silent era until 1994. The entries discuss each film's subject matter, critical reception, and social and political contexts, as well as its production, distribution, and exhibition history, including technical credits. The entries are grouped by country and arranged chronologically. Both fiction and documentary films (some no longer...

Establishing a new vision for film history, "Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema" urges readers to consider the importance of complex social and cultural forces in early film. Andre Gaudreault argues that Edison and the Lumieres did not invent cinema; they invented a device. Explaining how this device, the kinematograph, gave rise to cinema is the challenge he sets for himself in this volume. He highlights the forgotten role of the film lecturer and examines film's relationship with other visual spectacles in fin-de-siecle culture, from magic sketches to fairy plays and...

The authors begin with an overview of the extreme positions held by opposing camps in the debate over cinema: the "digitalphobes" who lament the implosion of cinema and the "digitalphiles" who celebrate its new,...

The authors begin with an overview of the extreme positions held by opposing camps in the debate over cinema: the "digitalphobes" who lament the implosion of cinema and the "digitalphiles" who celebrate its new,...