Silent Motion Picture Research Articles

Marion Evelyn Hong before and after the Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916)

This article is a result of an invitation to share the authors’ knowledge and family stories and offer perspectives about Marion E. Hong (1895–1969, also known as Marion Evelyn Wong). The intent is to provide scholars and researchers with first-hand knowledge about Marion’s life milestones and experiences directly from her family. The main source for the content of this article comes from remembrances of Marion’s descendants and documents as well as photographs in the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive. As Marion’s direct descendants, the authors offer first-hand knowledge about her and insight into possible motivations for making the silent motion picture film The Curse of the Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (dir. Marion E. Wong, Mandarin Film Company, US, 1916). Lisa Kumaradjaja is Marion’s granddaughter; Lisa’s mother, Arabella Hong Young, is Marion’s daughter who followed in Marion’s footsteps as a singer, performer, and entrepreneur. This article is written by the granddaughter and great-grandson of Marion E. Hong, Lisa Kumaradjaja and Chris Kumaradjaja, who now serve as the family historians. Information for this article has been gathered from the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive, family oral histories, as well as Lisa’s direct recollections of Marion.

Copyright in Pantomime

Why does the Copyright Act specifically provide for the protection of “pantomimes”? This article shows that the Copyright Act of 1976 amended the subject matter of copyright to include pantomimes simply in order to conform it to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. It further shows that the Berlin Act of 1909 amended the Berne Convention to provide for copyright protection of “les pantomimes” and “entertainments in dumb show” in order to ensure copyright protection of silent motion pictures. Unfortunately, the original purpose of providing copyright protection to “pantomimes” was forgotten. This Article argues that copyright protection of pantomimes is redundant on copyright protection of “motion pictures” and “dramatic works,” and reflects the carelessness of the drafters of the 1976 Act.

Gender Flux: Transatlantic Influence on Fashioning the Cross-dresser in American Silent Cinema

From the post-Victorian era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, European theater and film played a significant role in the temporal conditional, sociocultural acceptance of gender fluidity in the USA. My claim is that during a time period that spanned between approximately 1906 and 1934, the popularization of female/male impersonators served as a transgressive force that propelled a meaningful dialogue surrounding social tolerance. The selection of films in this article represents an attempt to narrow the vast field and introduce the strongest evidence to substantiate my assertion. Each film reveals a direct link to a European artistic tradition; all cast the cross-dresser as protagonist; costume/fashion plays a central role in characterization; and finally the narratives demonstrate a socially progressive point of view regarding the negotiation of gender roles. Through detailed film sequence readings and costume and cultural analysis, I conduct an examination of these North American pivotal silent motion pictures and their antecedent British, French, German, Italian, and Spanish artistic influences. In order to better understand the complex political climate simmering beneath the artifice of twentieth-century drag, this article will also contextualize these texts within the social crisis that erupted as a result of modernity.

Shakespeare in Chinese Cinema

Shakespeare’s plays were first adapted in the Chinese cinema in the era of silent motion pictures, such as A Woman Lawyer (from The Merchant of Venice, 1927), and A Spray of Plum Blossoms (from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1931). The most recent Chinese adaptations/spinoffs include two 2006 films based on Hamlet. After a brief review of Shakespeare’s history in the Chinese cinema, this study compares the two Chinese Hamlets released in 2006—Feng Xiaogang’s Banquet and Hu Xuehua’s Prince of the Himalayas to illustrate how Chinese filmmakers approach Shakespeare. Both re-invent Shakespeare’s Hamlet story and transfer it to a specific time, culture and landscape. The story of The Banquet takes place in a warring state in China of the 10th century while The Prince is set in pre-Buddhist Tibet. The former as a blockbuster movie in China has gained a financial success albeit being criticised for its commercial aesthetics. The latter, on the other hand, has raised attention amongst academics and critics and won several prizes though not as successful on the movie market. This study examines how the two Chinese Hamlet movies treat Shakespeare’s story in using different filmic strategies of story, character, picture, music and style.

Still: American silent motion picture photography

While the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs - the performer portrait and the scene still - Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor - visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over 150 of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant.

Pillow Girl

Pillow Girl was half of a two-part project demonstrating the use of digital technology to create new components for existing works. In the case of Pillow Girl this entailed the creation of a visual element to compliment an existing audio work. The projects' second part used this same process in reverse, creating a new audio component for an existing visual work (specifically, the production of a soundtrack for a silent motion picture). This article will focus on the first part of the project (Pillow Girl), the creation of a new visual component for an existing audio source.

Tackling Universal Women as a Research Problem: What Historiographic Sources Do and Don't Tell Us about "Gender" in the Silent Motion Picture Studio

Tackling Universal Women as a Research Problem: What Historiographic Sources Do and Don't Tell Us about "Gender" in the Silent Motion Picture Studio

Ozaphan: home cinema on cellophane

Ozaphan was a proprietary material devised for inexpensive motion-picture film prints sold to the home market. Developed in France in the 1920s, the stock printed silent motion pictures on cellophane. In the early 1930s, Ozaphan film was introduced in Germany on a large scale for educational purposes, as well as home entertainment. The production and selling of Ozaphan films started in 1931 and ended in the mid-1960s. This essay tracks the history of this little-known film material and discusses its material properties. The production and distribution of Ozaphan films was a collaboration among Germany's film equipment manufacturers, toy industry, and commercial motion picture industry.

Silent Film and the Socialization of American Immigrants: Lessons from an Old New Medium

Many people today are voicing concerns about the potentially deleterious social effects of media such as television and the Internet. The turn of the twenty-first century provides an interesting vantage point from which to look back one hundred years and examine people's concerns about the impacts of an earlier communication technology - silent film. This kind of historical exercise reminds us, first, that each major communication technology has had its proponents and its critics, and second, that the social influences of communication technologies are more profound than their developers could have anticipated. The turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century marked the beginning of a communications revolution that was to have a major impact in defining social life in the United States during the twentieth century. That move first began to take shape in devices developed in the late nineteenth century but not finding a strong social place until the twentieth; audio recordings, radio broadcasting, and motion pictures were some of the technologies developed during the last decades of the nineteenth century that were to be characteristic of the twentieth. In addition to changes in communication technology, vast social changes were occurring as a result of urbanization and immigration. The rise of the large city and its attendant social problems became a major concern of social workers and social commentators. Increasing immigration became a national issue during the 1890s and early 1900s. Millions of people, primarily those from European countries, poured into York City and settled in areas that seemed most familiar and affordable to them-those made up of other recent immigrants-- forming ghettos and neighborhoods defined by country of origin. This article traces the early development of motion picture technology and examines the roles that motion pictures and the moviegoing experience played in communicating American values, sensibilities, and emotions to immigrant populations. The silent motion picture provided an inexpensive and accessible form of entertainment for America's new immigrants. The lack of spoken language was an advantage in that actors in the early cinema used body language and facial expression to their full impact. Unhindered by the complex plots and characters that were to appear with sound films, silent films, as well as the moviegoing experience, provided immigrants with a glimpse of this new country, including what to expect, how to behave, and what to feel. As a new medium at the turn of the twentieth century, silent film helped transform individuals, institutions, and the relationships among people and between social groups. U.S. in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries United States immigration history is often divided into waves-the from approximately 1820-1880, the New Immigration from approximately 1885-1930, and the modern era, which began around 1930. The Old Migration period was stimulated by steamship and railroad transportation and encouraged by the midwest states, where local governments were attempting to build a larger population base. The Old Migration consisted primarily of Europeans during the early stages and Chinese and Japanese later in the century. Economic difficulties in their home countries and the promise of a new start in the United States was the impetus for many to leave their homes and head for America. The immigrants of the Old Migration were primarily from rural areas; many had lost their place in their newly-industrialized homeland. Many were farmers or artisans who came to this land and found work in large coastal cities or along the rapidly developing highways of westward expansion (Handlin; Morris and Morris). Immigrants of the second wave, the period, were also primarily of European origin, with many from eastern and southern Europe. Around the turn of the twentieth century there was a heavy influx from Russia, Poland, and Austria-- Hungary. …

Silent films, 1877-1996: a critical guide to 646 movies

This film reference covers 646 silent motion pictures, starting with Eadweard Muybridge's initial motion photography experiments in 1877 and even including The Taxi Dancer (1996). Among the genres included are classics, dramas, Westerns, light comedies, documentaries and even poorly produced early pornography. Masterpieces such as Joan the Woman (1916), Intolerance (1916) and Faust (1926) can be found, as well as rare titles that have not received critical attention since their original releases. Each entry provides the most complete credits possible, a full description, critical commentary, and an evaluation of the film's unique place in motion picture history Birth dates, death dates, and other facts are provided for the directors and players where available, with a selection of photographs of those individuals. The work is thoroughly indexed.

The Motion Picture in Science Education: "One Hundred Percent Efficiency"

This study provides a historical overview of the development of the motion picture as a tool within the context of science education. The technology was traced from its beginning as a silent motion picture through its current manifestation in videotapes and videodiscs. The use of the technology as a teaching tool is examined in terms of the concept of scientific literacy and the means by which the motion picture helped to accomplish the goals of scientific literacy.

Using Silent Motion Pictures to Teach Complex Syntax to Adult Deaf Readers

This research tested whether silent motion pictures could be a source of contexts that fostered comprehension of relative clause and passive voice sentences during reading. These two syntactic structures are chronically difficult for some deaf readers. According to the instructional strategy, while subjects watched silent comedy stories, the video display intermittently focused attention on short segments of action and then called for a decision regarding which of two sentences printed in a workbook described the action segment. After this, a display on the video screen provided feedback on the accuracy of the decision. If successful here, this approach might be applied to other areas of competence in order to elevate the generally low level of reading performance by many deaf students. The study applied a single subject design in order to measure sentence comprehension accuracy before and following use of the materials. The computerized testing procedure also measured sentence reading time, an index of attention use. Thus, these data allowed an examination of whether any increases in comprehension were associated with slower, more laborious rates of reading. The instructional approach was an indirect one sharing multiple aspects of whole language methodology, and the sample included deaf subjects at a variety of reading ability levels. This permitted examination of whether an indirect instructional approach could be successful with readers demonstrating relatively low reading ability. The central research question of the study was the following 'Can this instructional method be effective with deaf readers?'.

Jericho: The Walls Come Tumbling Down!

Special IssuE JERICHO The Walls Come Tumbling Down! Frank R Withrow e are here to discuss technology and its applications in the education of people who are deaf. But in doing so, we must also take into account the context within which this technology is, and will be, applied. School Setting Two thirds of the hearing-impaired students in American schools are now enrolled in mainstream programs. Some have adequate resources and teachers who provide excellent programs . Others have minimal services and staff. Public Law 94-142 requires the least restrictive environment for an equitable and appropriate education. Many have interpreted this to mean mainstreaming. I believe for deaf students it should, and in some instance has, meant different things for different students at different times in their school lives. It should mean that within a given state the residential school for the deaf and the mainstream programs are working in cooperation with one another. I am reminded of two students I knew when I was Director of Research and Clinical Services at the Illinois School for the Deaf. These students had been mainstreamed for most of their education. Both had excellent language and communication skills. One, above average on all aspects of her achievement tests, scored significantly above her grade level. The Chicago school system had provided services in the past, but at the time both were enrolled in over-crowded inner city schools with 45 to 50 students to a class. One mathematics teacher lectured with his back to the class. This intolerable educational environment resulted in the transfer of these students to the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville. Under different circumstances, both students could have completed their education in a mainstream program. However, at that time and in that place, the residential school was the least restrictive educational environment. One student has since graduated from NTID and the other from Gallaudet University . One has continued her education and received a Masters degree from a state university. I cite these two students because I believe that their experiences represent the essential intent of P.L. 94-142, notably that every student must have an Individual Educational Program—the critical factor is individual. Too often we have pitted different educational programs against one another. We argue over instructional and communication methods and forget the individual student. We must offer all deaf stuAmeiucan Annals of the Deaf dents a complete and continuous educational program that allows each individual to fulfill his/her potential. At different times in their lives, they may develop best in different educational environments. Through its residential facilities, the state can provide support services to all deaf students and their families. These statewide services should include early identification, parent workshops, parent/pupil tutoring services, home visiting programs, psychological services, social services, communication services, day classes for deaf students, mainstream classes, and residential schools. Such statewide services will enrich the educational lives of all deaf students. And it is essential that deaf students have access to appropriate technology in their education wherever their school might be. Captions I'd like to consider some major technological resources that over the past decades have been made available to the deaf community, and especially to students . I speak particularly of captions. For a short time early in this century, deaf and hearing people shared together the common communications of silent motion pictures. Once we entered the Nickelodeon together, we were brothers and sisters experiencing a common means of communication. The deaf person, accustomed to reading the sensitive signs of body language , may have been at an advantage over her hearing peer. The captions interspersed in the films were common to each group. A deaf friend once told me how excited he was when he went to a silent movie with his brothers and sisters, because they all shared the same experience. Those days of wine and roses were short lived. Science brought about talking motion pictures and, once again, deaf people were separated from their hearing brothers and sisters. It was not until 1958 that deaf people again enjoyed motion pictures with captions. This came about through congressional legislation which established the Captioned Films program. This legislation provided for...

“American Moviemakers: The Dawn of Sound” at the Museum of Modern Art

“AMERICAN MOVIEMAKERS: THE DAWN OF SOUND” AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART EDWARD JAY PERSHEY “Talking pictures” is an old-fashioned term. Nowadays we simply call them movies because all movies have synchronous sound. But movies were first produced commercially as silent films, and only after 30 years or so was it possible to add sound to the moving image. “American Moviemakers: The Dawn of Sound,” a traveling exhibit that opened at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City in October 1989, looks at the time in the late 1920s when sound became a practical reality and the first successful “talkies” played in theaters across the country. This small exhibit, a joint production of MOMA and the American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) Archives, is geared for theater and auditorium lobbies and traveled around the country during 1990. However, the exhibit is only the tip of the iceberg for a much larger restoration project involving several insti­ tutions (primarily the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA], Film and Television Archives) to restore the Vitaphone movies, early sound-on-disc films produced by Warner Brothers, Metro-GoldwynMayer (MGM), and First National studios between 1926 and 1931. The traveling exhibit includes screenings of these wonderfully re­ stored Vitaphone classics. For movie lovers and restoration aficio­ nados, “The Dawn of Sound” is a feast for both eyes and ears. To review briefly the history of sound movies and the role of Vitaphone movies in that history, commercial movies in the United States started in 1892-93 with experiments at Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. In the specially built “Black Maria” studio, the Edison lab created motion pictures in a form that established standards of technology and practice that molded the industry for years, to the present in some instances, as 35-mm film continues to be used today. Edison’s original conception of movies included the idea of synchronous sound, and his famous patent caveat Dr. Pershey is director of the Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell, Massa­ chusetts. He was formerly curator at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey, and is a trustee of the Thomas A. Edison Black Maria Film and Video Festival for modern independent filmmakers.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X791/3201-0009$01.00 106 “American Moviemakers: The Dawn of Sound” 107 of 1887 made the analogy between phonographic recordings (which were themselves barely a practical reality in 1887) and the recording of moving images for eventual playback. His early experiments with moving pictures coupled photographic emulsions with phonographic wax recording media. Simultaneously recording both sight and sound, storing the two kinds of data on different media, and then reproducing them synchronously proved to be possible but frustratingly difficult using the mechanical and electrical technology of the early 1890s. Edison’s crew dropped sound movie experiments to focus on the problems and opportunities of silent him technology. Other experimenters around the world did the same. Except for sporadic trials and partial successes over the next thirty years (the most notable being the Edison “Kinetophone” system using oversized cylinder records in 1912—13), the movies people paid to see in theaters were silent visual treats, the only sound being that of the live accompaniment of piano, organ, or orchestra. “The Dawn of Sound” in this exhibit refers to the collaborative work between AT&T and three Hollywood studios in the late 1920s. The work of AT&T and Western Electric on long-distance telephony during the period startingjust before World War I involved improve­ ments in microphones, amplifiers, and loud-speaking telephones. Also, AT&T was developing electrically recorded phonograph re­ cordings. Sometime in 1922 Edward Craft, assistant chief engineer at Western Electric, became interested in the possibility of putting these various technologies together into a system for producing motion pictures with synchronous sound. The system developed during the mid-1920s became the very successful Vitaphone. Using 16-inch disc recordings, it played long enough at 33*/3 rpm (six to ten minutes) to match to one reel of 35-mm silent motion picture. The discs were electrically recorded and played back using an electrical amplifier to drive loudspeakers. Standard silent movie...

Cinematography — Projector Usage of 8 mm Type R Silent Motion-Picture Film for Direct Front Projection – Specifications

Cinematography — Projector Usage of 8 mm Type R Silent Motion-Picture Film for Direct Front Projection – Specifications

The evaluation of learning under dissimilar systems of instruction

Some of you who are present can recall the time when the possible uses of the silent motion picture for instructional purposes first attracted wide attention. As is regularly true on the appearance of a new educational medium, opinions ranged through the whole gamut from expressions of doubt and opposition to extreme claims, such as that we might soon be able to dispense with much that teachers do in the classroom. Naturally, some brave souls saw in the controversy the need to undertake research in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the silent film in comparison with traditional procedures.

Fim Recording and Reproduction

In a historical summary of motion-picture sound recording and reproduction, some of the technical problems and solutions are discussed, starting with the conversion of silent motionpicture studios to sound studios. During the early years, both the sound-on-disk system (arner Vitaphone) and the sound-onilm system (Fox Movietone) were used. The film recording method was in its early development stage and the sound quality was relatively poor, but it had many inherent advantages which ultimately led to its universal acceptance. The first commercially successful photographic sound recording system used a variable intensity modulator known as the Aeo-light. This was later replaced by the ERPI light valve which is still in use today. The optical system used with the light valve is shown, and certain photographic requirements for linear recording are discussed. The variable area recording system is the outgrowth of the Duddell oscillograph. The oil damped galvanometer was replaced by a magnetic-type optical modulator, and a more effective optical system was developed. Several sound tracks produced by this unit are shown. Noise reduction methods required by both the variable area and variable density recording systems are described. An unusual type of sibilant distortion caused considerable difficulty in the early variable area sound tracks. The nature of this distortion and the means of correcting it are given. Although magnetic recording is one of the oldest methods known, it came into its own during World War II. Its potential importance to the motion-picture industry was quickly recognized.

SIMULTANEOUS AND RETROSPECTIVE PERSON PERCEPTION

The subjects were shown a silent motion picture and asked to describe simultaneously what they saw. They were then requested to give a retrospective account of the same film. Comparisons of these reports indicated that the simultaneous verbalizations yielded more information about the subjects' perception of other persons' feelings and momentary states. It is proposed that clinical diagnostics should include data on immediate person perception as well as retrospective accounts.

Some Suggested Visual Aids for Classroom Use

HE term, is so inclusive that one might safely assume that no professional classroom Bible teacher has ever taught without employing visual aids in one form or other. He walks to the blackboard to write out a strange word or sketch a diagram. He points on a wall map to the relative locations of Galilee, Samaria and Judea. He has the class make maps of Palestine or models of Hebrew scrolls. He holds before the class a large print of one of Michelangelo's prophets. He chooses for supplementary reading a book with illustrations rather than one without. At each of these moments he is making an effort to supplement words, read in the Bible and heard from the teacher, with nonverbal images. To the extent the teacher uses the blackboard, diagrams, maps, models and pictures, to that extent he is using visual aids. The term, projected visual aids, as defined by Rogers and Vieth, includes those efforts through which, by means of light and lenses, an image of the object to be presented is thrown on the screen.' This clearly includes (1) reflected pictures, (2) slides of both the older (3x 4) stereopticon type and the newer miniature (2x2) type, (3) the filmstrip (also variously called filmslide, slidefilm, stripfilm, Picturol and Stillfilm), (4) the silent motion picture (now almost wholly 16 mm. in size) and (5) the type most recently developed for use in the classroom, the sound motion picture. Any of these forms can be used in either black and white or in color. It does not require much consideration by a Bible teacher of imagination and initiative to realize the assistance these devices have the possibility of bringing to the classroom. He knows that the college student of today became familiar with the process of learning by pictur s from his earliest years in kindergarten, through his later extracurricular fascination with the comic books, to his high school days when, in the most progressive schools, the projector was as much a part of the classroom eq ipment as the blackboard and the bulletin board, with its clippings of news pictures and car oons as well as news stories. Beginning in January, 1946, all California colleges training teachers, in order to maintain accreditation, were ordered to require of all teacher graduates a course in audio-visual education of a least two semester units in value.2 Many such illustrations could be given of the extent to which audio-visual aids are being used in the preparatory schools of our country. The projected picture-particularly now with the rapid spread of television into the homes of our nation-has become part of the environment from which our students come to college.3 This only means that projected visual aids have become accepted no longer as novelties and play-things or even as mere media of entertainment but rather as regular channels of communication. The advertiser, the politician and the propagandist know the worth of the projected picture. Industry used visual aids in war-time training programs. A survey of 239 companies representing a wide variety of industries was recently reported. Seventyfive percent of those surveyed reported having used visual aids in more than one type of training. Of those who had used visual aids in war-time training, 84% planned to continue or to increase their use of visual aids.4 The larger universities are developing extensive bureaus of visual instruction both for their own campus classrooms and for their extension services. It is not difficult for the Bible classroom teacher to become aware of the worth

A Study of the Learning and Retention of Materials Presented by Lecture and by Silent Film

The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) the informational gains made by pupils listening to a lecture, as compared with gains made from seeing a silent motion picture presenting the same material, and (2) the retention of the informational gains made by the two methods of presenta tion over varying periods of time from three weeks to fifteen weeks. With the renewed interest in visual education in recent years there has been considerable emphasis placed upon the importance of the visual approach to teaching. Many studies give consistent evidence that pupils make greater gains when visual materials are used. In considering teaching methods it is important to know whether these greater gains are due pri marily to the visual presentation alone, or to the visual presentation plus other activities such as teacher preparation and follow-up, pupil discussion, etc. If the visual presentation alone is responsible for the effectiveness of teaching procedures, based on the use of pictures, then teachers would be justified in the mere showing of pictures. If, on the other hand, it is found that the mere showing of pictures does not seem to be an effective teaching procedure, then teachers need to be much concerned with the teaching devices used to supplement the seeing experience. It must be kept in mind that this study is not a comparison of the visual method and the lecture method. As the study is described it will be apparent that it is rather a comparison of one way of using silent motion pictures (the mere showing of the pictures with no supplementary pro cedures) with a lecture method which included the use of such visual materials as blackboard diagrams, etc.