Conference Report: Border Crossings: Rethinking Silent Cinema, February 8–10, 2008, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

The subtitle gestures toward the aim of this conference: to reconsider and re evaluate established approaches to the study of silent cinema. should thus be taken in a broad sense, encompassing not only the inquiry into in ternational and transnational movements that has always constituted the history of cinema, but also more discursive meanings that challenge the epistemological boundaries of the field. Conference papers thus critiqued the tendency to focus solely on early Euro-American cinemas, while shedding light on non-Western con texts that necessitated a concomitant rethinking of the concept of national cinema and its historiography in film studies. All of the cutting-edge presentations brought to light obscure but important primary sources: films that have never been critically discussed, articles from non English language trade journals, fascinating export statistics, and hitherto unseen still images. The conference called attention to a number of innovative historical perspectives on silent film, including analysis not only of non-Western silent cine mas but also of how films travel across borders and the variety of meanings that may be produced when they reach their new contexts. Such approaches proved that there is still much to be learned, within and beyond Hollywood, from this era of cinema history. The chief organizers, Anupama Kapse and Laura Horak, should be com mended for putting on such a stimulating event, bringing together established and emerging scholars in a lively debate and stimulating exchange. Indeed, if their vi sion for the conference was to explore relatively under-researched vicinities across the disciplinary boundaries of silent film studies, then Border Crossings should be considered an unqualified success. A major concern of the conference was to focus on the problem of national cin ema within a transnational context. Many papers revealed how the latter implicitly critiqued the appropriateness of the former as an analytical category within the in creasingly globalizing field of film studies. Sustained and critical analysis of the national cinema model has been sorely lacking in the way the field often structures standard film histories. The findings of the first panel, Borders in Wartime,