The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema

Description

The potential of films to educate has been crucial for the development of cinema intended to influence culture, and is as important as conceptions of film as a form of art, science, industry, or entertainment. Using the concept of institutionalization as a heuristic for generating new approaches to the history of educational cinema, contributors to this volume study the co-evolving discourses, cultural practices, technical standards, and institutional frameworks that transformed educational cinema from a convincing idea into an enduring genre. The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema examines the methods of production, distribution, and exhibition established for the use of educational films within institutions–such as schools, libraries, and industrial settings in various national and international contexts and takes a close look at the networks of organizations, individuals, and government agencies that were created as a result of these films' circulation. Through case studies of educational cinemas in different North American and European countries that explore various modes of institutionalization of educational film, this book highlights the wide range of vested interests that framed the birth of educational and nontheatrical cinema.

Acknowledgments

Introduction / Marina Dahlquist and Joel Frykholm

1. Platforms for Learning / Jan Olsson

2. The Kinoreformbewegung in Germany: Creating an Infrastructure for Pedagogical Screenings / Sabine Lenk and Frank Kessler

3. One Family: The Movement of Educational Film in Britain and its Empire / Tom Rice

4. Far and Close: The Gemeentelijke Schoolbioscoop in Rotterdam / Floris Paalman

5. Partners in Screen Education: Philanthropic Organizations and the Film Industry / Marina Dahlquist

6. The Best Teachers and the Best Preachers: Film, University Extension, and the Project of Assimilation in Alberta, 1917-1936 / Zoë Druick

7. "A Casual Glance Reveals a Perfect Mine of Treasures": George Kleine's Catalogue of Educational Motion Pictures (1910) / Oliver Gaycken

8. George Kleine and the Institutional Film Exchange: An Experiment in Nontheatrical Film Distribution, 1921–1929 / Joel Frykholm

9. Ford Films and Ford Viewers: Examining "Nontheatrical" Films in the Theaters and Beyond / Katy Peplin

10. Institutionalizing Educational Cinema in the United States during the Early 1920s / Gregory A. Waller

Sujets

• EDUCATION
• Película fotográfica
• Censorship
• Photography
• Performing arts
• History of film
• Colonial
• Antisemitism
• Distribution
• Technique
• Film
• Production

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253045218
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

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2019 Indiana University Press
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ISBN 978-0-253-04519-5 (hb)
ISBN 978-0-253-04520-1 (pb)
ISBN 978-0-253-04522-5 (web PDF)
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Marina Dahlquist and Joel Frykholm
1 Platforms for Learning / Jan Olsson
2 The Kinoreformbewegung in Germany: Creating an Infrastructure for Pedagogical Screenings / Sabine Lenk and Frank Kessler
3 One Family: The Movement of Educational Film in Britain and Its Empire / Tom Rice
4 Far and Close: The Gemeentelijke Schoolbioscoop in Rotterdam / Floris Paalman
5 Partners in Screen Education: Philanthropic Organizations and the Film Industry / Marina Dahlquist
6 The Best Teachers and the Best Preachers: Film, University Extension, and the Project of Assimilation in Alberta, 1917-36 / Zo Druick
7 A Casual Glance Reveals a Perfect Mine of Treasures : George Kleine s Catalogue of Educational Motion Pictures (1910) / Oliver Gaycken
8 George Kleine and the Institutional Film Exchange: An Experiment in Nontheatrical Film Distribution, 1921-29 / Joel Frykholm
9 Ford Films and Ford Viewers: Examining Nontheatrical Films in the Theaters and Beyond / Katy Peplin
10 Institutionalizing Educational Cinema in the United States during the Early 1920s / Gregory A. Waller
Index
Acknowledgments
S IX OF THE essays included in this collection are revised versions of papers presented at an international symposium at Stockholm University in May 2013 titled The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema. The editors would like to thank all participants of the symposium-that is, Zo Druick, Oliver Gaycken, Lee Grieveson, Frank Kessler, Nico de Klerk, Sabine Lenk, Paul S. Moore, and Greg Waller-for contributing to the vivid, critical, and constructive discussions during which the seeds for this volume were planted. We re equally thankful to the scholars who joined in somewhat later to take the topic in new and exciting directions. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University, both for financial, practical, and other forms of support that made the symposium possible and for covering the costs of copy editing an earlier draft of this manuscript. Many thanks to Erika Stevens, who carried out the aforementioned copy editing with great skill and diligence and whose perceptive comments on the contents were extremely useful. Insightful remarks from the anonymous readers of a later draft also helped us improve the quality of the volume considerably. Thanks go as well to Bart van der Gaag for helping out with the images and for other kinds of technical support throughout the process. Finally, our sincere appreciation goes to Janice Frisch and her coworkers at Indiana University Press for all their efforts in making this book a reality.

Introduction
Marina Dahlquist and Joel Frykholm
T HE PEDAGOGICAL USEFULNESS of motion pictures has long been recognized as a defining quality of the medium-particularly during the formative decades of cinema. Indeed, ideas about film s potential to educate have been crucial for the development of cinema as a cultural institution, arguably just as important as various conceptions of film as a form of art, science, industry, or entertainment. For example, when reformers in the early years of the twentieth century began voicing concerns about films allegedly undesirable fictional representations and their effects on impressionable audiences-including women, children, immigrants, and the working classes-many of the same reformers also suggested that a unique educational potential held the key to the medium s entire raison d tre. From the very first years of cinema, the widely shared faith in the educational value of moving images translated into a plethora of practices when it came to film production and programming. Even if the dissemination of motion pictures to a mass public happened largely as a result of the discovery and development of their commercial potential as a cheap but attractive amusement, commerce was just one manifestation of many ideas about the proper social and cultural uses of the new technology.
Acknowledging the diversity of cinema and the complexity of its past may seem de rigueur to present-day film scholars. But this was not always the case. Until quite recently, much cinema scholarship was centered on a standard film form-the narrative feature film-and the standard film experience or situation that is theatrical moviegoing. Generally, if not exclusively, there has been a bias in favor of a conception of cinema as art or entertainment and a concomitant historiographical tendency toward linearity, canon construction, and artist idolization. The ongoing scholarly exploration of educational cinema, and other strands within the domains of nontheatrical cinema, can be thought of as a challenge to these norms, biases, and processes of inclusion and exclusion. Through the rediscovery of previously neglected other cinemas, orphan films, and exhibition contexts outside and beyond the purpose-built commercial movie theater, the field of cinema studies has expanded, adding nuance, richness, and complexity to the historical understanding of cinema at large. As a result, cinema scholars have gained a new and deeper insight into the wider cultural histories of cinema and the social and political roles cinema has played historically. 1 This is not to imply that cinema historians no longer hold any biases or no longer have to delineate, restrict, and select-only that their area of study and their approaches are becoming increasingly diverse.
This collection of essays, which offers new research on educational cinema in North America and Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, can be seen as a continuation of the ongoing scholarly efforts to expand the terrain of cinema studies and historical research of film. The book s aim is to offer a twofold contribution to the study of educational cinema. First, it recasts the history of educational cinema in terms of its institutionalization . Second, it offers a more distinctly international approach to the topic than has typically been the case, by highlighting patterns of transnational influence as well as connections and movements between the local and the global. Along these lines, the essays explore how, why, and to what extent an institutionalization of educational cinema occurred in the 1910s and 1920s and whether there is an overarching narrative of how educational cinema coalesced into a relatively autonomous and enduring institution. If so, what were the elements of its institutional stability? How, or to what extent, were durable methods of production, distribution, and exhibition established? What types of lasting networks of organizations, individuals, companies, and government agencies were created? What genres and types of film came to dominate the field? How did local, national, and international initiatives connect in processes of institutionalization? In sum, the project s overarching questions concern the wider developments and larger patterns of educational cinema in the 1910s and 1920s, in different local, national, and transnational contexts. Naturally, these questions are not formulated from scratch but instead are posed in dialogue with booming research initiatives undertaken during the last ten years or so-work that has made it possible to discern some general patterns and formations of educational cinema nationally and internationally.
This collection brings attention to a remarkable but under-researched phase in the history of educational cinema; namely, the period that came after an early experimental phase that was characterized by initial debates over the educational value of moving images and an exploratory search for successful practices, but before 28 mm and later 16 mm film stock enabled more widespread and structured uses of motion pictures within educational and amateur contexts. Roughly speaking, the pioneering efforts and debates were about the discursive construction of the field of educational cinema while the later developments of small-gauge formats concerned the technical standards of the field. By contrast, this book is about the range of cultural practices that shaped educational cinema as an institution, and about the ways educational cinema fit into a larger institutional matrix. Or, to put a finer point on the agenda, the period this book explores is distinguished by the ways in which discourses, cultural practices, technical standards, and institutional frameworks coevolved according to patterns that transformed educational cinema from a convincing idea into an enduring institution. This is the process we refer to with the book s primary keyword: institutionalization . The term appears throughout the volume but is not meant to imply a faithful adaptation from sociological institutionalism, institutional economics, organizational studies, or some other field where it has been theorized and operationalized. This