Mapping the correlation of cinema shows with magic shows

Early days (started June ’13) of a mapping project to track the criss-crossing and potential correlation of magic shows with movie shows in 1920s Colorado. Yes, only two entries so far, and just barely learning to use the GIS software… Watch me grow!

–> ArcGIS explorer

Why Colorado, you ask? I do like the mountains, but even more, I like the open-access digitized archive of local historic newspapers, the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, that has extensive coverage of newspapers up and until 1923 (copyright restrictions for later date, ach!), and which I can access from my home :-).

Digitial Humanities: 2 recent projects

Following on the heels of an engrossing conversation about Digital Humanities at the last HoMer group meeting, in parallel to the last NECS conference in Prague last June — not just the fabulous projects already up and running, such as Richard C. Allen’s Going to the Show (University of North Carolina), but also the promises of Big Data in the field of movie reception (from Jeffrey Klenotic‘s mapping of places of amusement, from the 19th century onwards, to illustrate the conflicts and cooperations between movie houses and vaudeville houses, to the great visualisations proposed by Deb Verhoeven from Deakin University and her team in Australia to track recent changes to global exhibition of films)…

[sorry long sentence]

…come two truly exciting developments for film scholars around the world. Digital humanities at their best.

–> Lantern: from the Media History Digital Library, now a search engine to explore their vast and growing collection of film magazines. Free, easily available, a must for film scholars engaged in understanding reception.

–> PictureGoing: the latest brainchild of web-prolific Luke McKernan (of Bioscope fame), this aims to provide curiosity-seekers and reception scholars alike with “an ongoing survey reproducing testimony of watching films, from the 1890s to the present day”, no less ! Sources added, what, every day since the site went live in early september. You’d be a fool not to subscribe, frankly.

MPPDA archives — online

This is, simply, astonishing:

The MPPDA Digital Archive

The Reel Journal 1925-1926

Just stumbled across this online version of the The Reel Journal (1926), self-described as “The Film Trade Paper of The SouthWest”, and which seems heavy on the Kansas area. Of course, one could always go to boxoffice.com, since that’s the name under which this magazine is published today: its vault is free of charge and copies can be PDF downloaded.

Digitizing Archives

The Media History Digital Library has finished digitizing the entire run of The Film Daily from 1922 to 1929. That’s right : fully searchable AND fully viewable copies of The Film Daily, on top of the Photoplay issues and Moving Picture World they had already digitized.  This is fantastic work from David Pierce and Eric Hoyt of  USC. And they’re promising MORE volumes of those three publications later this year. Wow !

also online and also free

and also a trove of information for those studying Japanese cinema : Yale University (and Aaron Gerow) are posting a link to explore their material covering Japanese cinema in their collections. (Beyond Yale U. Gerow’s and Abé Mark Nornes’s Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies is still essential to the Japanese film scholar)

Free online 56 Thanhouser films 1910-1917

This is huge :

Watch Thanhouser Films Online

With the increased popularity of online video delivery combined with the mission for Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc., I am pleased to provide streaming video to all 56 films currently available on the Thanhouser DVD collection at no charge.

Not to mention the other goodies from the Thanhouser.org website maintained by the grandson of studio founder Edwin Thanhouser. What every studio ought to to, really.

 

US 1920s Film Magazines Online

 

 

 

UPDATE Aug. 16, 2011 ! Unless I’m mistaken and my VPN isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, those magazines below cannot be accessed anymore through the GoogleBooks service. Seems in the transition to Google eBooks loads of copyright issues have surfaced and are barring even preview of those long-past published magazines. Sigh.

 

There’s some hope and consolation, however, in the effort currently underway at Prelinger’s Archive.org to digitize film magazines (back in may this year I blogged about this fantastic effort) : this is the link to the feed where you can see all the recent additions to their growing collection.

 

This is a list of US silent film magazines that you may read online through Googlebooks:

“The Aristocrat of motion picture magazines”: Photoplay

• vol. 10, June 1916
• vol 11, mars 1917
• vol. 13-14, dec.1917
• vol. 18-20, june 1920

“Service to Exhibitors”: Motion Picture News

• vol. 20-24, nov. 1919

Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers

• no. 3, 1916
• no. 4, 1917
• no. 10-11, 1920
• no. 12-13, 1921
• no. 14-15, 1922

Archives of Variety to be available online

Fantastic news from DocMovies:

Variety has launched a preview of its digital archives featuring highlights of issues from the 1960-65 period.

Variety is in the process of scanning every issue of Variety and Daily Variety from 1910 to the present to create a searchable digital archive that will offer detailed chronicle of showbiz’s history and evolution.
The full-page scanning process will allow readers to see entire pages, including advertisements.

The full archive is expected to be available by early next year as a paid offering via Variety.com, with licenses available for libraries and other institutions.

Why isn’t it next year already ?

Tell me it ain’t so, Joe – a good time to be alive online

Library of Congress in New Media Initiatives – The Library Today Library of Congress

March 25, 2009
Library of Congress Makes More Assets and Information Available Through New-Media Initiatives
YouTube and iTunes Launches Will Follow Groundbreaking Flickr Pact to Bring More Treasures to the Public
The Library of Congress will begin sharing content from its vast video and audio collections on the YouTube and Apple iTunes web services as part of a continuing initiative to make its incomparable treasures more widely accessible to a broad audience. The new Library of Congress channels on each of the popular services will launch within the next few weeks.

Developping story…