New Cinema History

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New Cinema History is a movement of media historians dedicated to rewriting film history as a social history of film cultures, instead of merely an art history of the moving image. In the early 1990s, Annette Kuhn was among the first scholars to systematically research cinemagoing, in the context of the project "Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain." [1] Following the example of 'New Film History', [2] while distinguishing from it, Richard Maltby coined the term 'New Cinema History,' as "a body of work that focuses on the circulation and consumption of film and examines cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange." [3] Maltby's terminology partly aimed to institutionalize and expand to an international scale his prior decade-long collaboration with Melvyn Stokes researching Hollywood film audiences, [4] [5] [6] and coincided with the formation of the HoMER Network: History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception.

New Cinema History asks questions like, 'Who is going to the movies? Where are the theaters located? Why are they located there? What do people remember about going to the movies?' Richard Maltby argued that the films themselves were the most “expendable element of the experience of cinema.” [7] Oral history plays a large role in New Cinema History, and one will quickly find that people remember what it was like to go to the movies, not necessarily the films themselves.

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References

  1. Kuhn, Annette (2002). An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory. I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. ISBN   9781860648670.
  2. Elsaesser, Thomas (1986). "The "New" Film History". Sight and Sound. 55 (4): 246–251.
  3. Maltby, Richard; Biltereyst, Daniël; Philippe, Meers (2011). Explorations in new cinema history : approaches and case studies. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. xii. ISBN   9781405199490. OCLC   692084803.
  4. Melvyn, Stokes; Maltby, Richard (1999). Identifying Hollywood's audiences : cultural identity and the movies. British Film Institute. ISBN   9780851707389. OCLC   41338511.
  5. Melvyn, Stokes; Maltby, Richard (2001). Hollywood spectatorship : changing perceptions of cinema audiences. BFI Pub. ISBN   9780851708119. OCLC   45306616.
  6. Maltby, Richard; Melvyn, Stokes; Allen, Robert Clyde (2007). Going to the movies : Hollywood and the social experience of cinema. University of Exeter Press. ISBN   9780859898119. OCLC   180880538.
  7. Maltby, Richard (2011). "New Cinema Histories". Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies: 4.