Victorian Popular Culture

Victorian Popular Culture is an essential resource for the study of popular entertainment and culture in the 19th century and the early 20th century. From Adam Matthew Digital, the database is a portal for several collections including:

• Spiritualism, Sensation & Magic 
• Circuses, Sideshows & Freaks 
• Music Hall, Theatre & Popular Entertainment 
• Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments & the Advent of Cinema 

The database includes full-text reproductions from a variety of printed materials, still and moving images, slideshow presentations, essays, bibliographies and more. The collection of materials are drawn from an impressive list of participating libraries.

Each section can be searched by keyword or by an advanced search option. You can also choose to browse the list of entries. The content is expansive and each time I use this database -- I discover something new and sensational. I love the pictures of the kinora, reproductions of postcards, full-text of "Opportunities in the Motion Picture Industry," published in 1922, includes a wonderful entry on the role of the costume designer, and  "The Sphinx: a monthly magazine for magicians and illusionists." 

If you are interested in early popular entertainments such as vaudeville, magic, circus and the advent of cinema -- this is an essential resource.

Access to this resource through Columbia University Library is limited to current affiliates.

"Through the Camera Lens"

Moving Picture World was one of the most important of the many trade publications for the American film industry. It began publication on March 9, 1907 and appeared weekly until January 7, 1928 when it became Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World.

"Through the Camera Lens:" The Moving Picture World and the Silent cinema Era, 1907-1927 is a full-text searchable database and an essential resource for the study of the early years of American cinema. In addition to feature articles, the publication reviewed current film releases, contained news about the industry and included interviews. This database is licensed from Gale Cengage Learning and is only available to Columbia affiliates from this link.

If you are affiliated with another university or college -- please check with your library for access.

Also -- open access is available from The Media History Digital Library. They have scanned issues of Moving Picture World from 1907-1919. You can browse issues and download PDF articles from their site. 

This database is highly recommended.

Film Language Glossary

The Film Language Glossary has been made available for public use. Developed in 2005 by the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University, the website provides definitions of essential terms used in basic and advanced film courses. The terms are supplemented by film clips, animations, images and/or commentary to enhance the understanding of these terms.


Click here for full announcement.

Wiley Blackwell History of American Film

This excellent volume is now available as an e-book.

From the publisher --

"The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film provides a chronological portrait of American film history from its origins to the present day. Taken as a whole, the essays in this collection represent a comprehensive and nuanced overview of American film history from the intersecting perspectives of industry, audiences, aesthetics, culture, politics, issues, and ideology."
 
The 90 essays are available in PDF format. The volume is illustrated with over 200 images.

The title is accessible by title search in CLIO.

20th Century North American Drama

From the publisher... 

"This edition of Twentieth Century North American Drama contains 2,059 plays by 434 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.More than 150 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors."

Search the database from Columbia University Libraries. 

Audio Drama: The L.A. Theatre Works Collection

Audio Drama the L.A. Theatre Works from Alexander Street Press now contains 302 plays delivered in streaming audio. The plays are some of the most significant dramatic works written in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and are performed by an international roster of actors. Here are a few highlights from the collection.


Alan Ayckbourn (Henceforward, Man of the Moment, Round and Round in the Garden, Table Manners)
Anton Chekhov (Three Sisters)
Susan Glaspell (Trifles)
Henrik Ibsen (A Doll's House)
David Ives (Long Ago and Far Away, New Jerusalem, Time Flies)
David Mamet (Bobby Gould in Hell, Reunion, The Shawl)
Jean-Baptiste Moliere (Tartuffe, The Bungler)
Clifford Odets (Awake and Sing!)
Yasmina Reza (The Unexpected Man)
William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth)
Sam Shepard (Buried Child)
Richard Sheridan (The Rivals, The School for Scandal)
Neil Simon (California Suite)

Notable actors include Anne Heche (Henceforward), Jane Leeves (Round and Round in the Garden), Lisa Bonet (Say Zebra), Alfred Molina (Copenhagen), Ed Asner (New Jerusalem), Ed Begley, Jr. (Time Flies), Hank Azaria (It's Not a Fair World), Steve Carell (Sin), Marilu Henner (Bobby Gould in Hell), Richard Kind (Awake and Sing!), Kathleen Turner (The Graduate), Walter Matthau (The Hole in the Top of the World) among others.

Arts Administration Resources

Here are a few resources for researching topics in arts administration.

• Gale Virtual Reference Library -- includes encyclopedias on small business and information on managing non-profits.

• Foundation Directory  -- search grants for theater

• Factiva  -- full-text business information including non-profits 

• ABI  -- citations and full-text for business journals -- part of the ProQuest family of databases

• International Index to Performing Arts -- citations and full-text for popular and scholarly journal articles on the performing arts -- also part of the ProQuest family of databases

• EBSCO -- includes Art Index, International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance, Humanities Full Text, Film and Television Literature Index -- you can search across all or selected EBSCO databases

• ProQuest  -- includes extensive current and historical newspapers, ABI, International Index to the Performing Arts, Vogue, and more -- you can search across all or selected ProQuest databases

Sample keywords 

• arts administration
• arts management 
• trends performing art* salaries
• arts funding 
• public support arts 
• government support arts 
• foundation support arts 

Kobal Collection

The Kobal Collection is a preeminent collection of images related to the motion picture industry, primarily U.S. with some international content. Established by John Kobal, the collection numbers more than one million photos from early cinema to modern day including publicity stills, portraits, celebrity photos, and costume shots. Take note the next time you read a book about Hollywood or the film industry -- it is likely that Kobal images have been included.

I am grateful to Lauretta Dives from The Picture Desk -- Kobal Collection -- for granting me 50 images to use in my blog postings. With this collection, I am launching a new series of postings with focus on costume designers, the year 1939 in film, films from the 1970s and Billy Wilder! All beautifully illustrated with images from the Kobal Collection.

Check out this new book!

EARLY CINEMA TODAY: THE ART OF PROGRAMMING AND LIVE PERFORMANCE ed. by Martin Loiperdinger. The essays focus on innovative presentations of old films -- a must read for anyone interested in early cinema.

From the publisher's website:

"This volume presents a number of innovative projects; Mariann Lewinsky’s A Hundred Years Ago programmes for scholars and archivists at the Bologne Festival, Eric de Kuyper’s integrating films from the 1910s into elaborated performance events, both curators’ jointly programmed From the Deep series at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Madeleine Bernstorff’s and Mariann Lewinsky’s weekend in Berlin with films related to the suffragettes’ movement, Vanessa Toulmin’s numerous shows of early local films for today’s local people, and last but not least the Crazy Cinématographe, the Luxemburg fairground cinematograph show curated by Nicole Dahlen and Claude Bertemes, which includes front-shows and film narrators, the essentials of fairground performance. All these remarkable appropriations of early cinema offer a variety of new perspectives to experience and understand what cinema has been in the beginning."

Taylor Biography

A new biography of Elizabeth Taylor -- "Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice" --focuses on Taylor as a feminist on the screen and in her personal life. The author, M.G. Lord, discusses a number of important film roles where Taylor portrays strong-willed and independent women.

Read the review from the New York Times.

American Smart Cinema

Check out this new title by Claire Perkins and published by Edinburgh University Press.

From the publisher's website, "American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of United States filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and nihilistic effects. Tracing the emergence of smart cinema amidst the texts and debates of the 1990s 'irony epidemic', the book describes the unstable tone and 'double' speech of such films as: The Royal Tenenbaums, Adaptation, The Squid and the Whale, Palindromes, The Last Days of Disco, Flirt, Ghost World, Your Friends and Neighbors, Donnie Darko and The Savages. "

Oxford Bibilographies Online Cinema and Media

For Columbia students and faculty -- check out this new resource.

Cinema and Media, a new subject module, was recently added to our collection of Oxford Bibliographies Online. From the publisher's website, "Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects."

This is a highly recommended resource for beginning research in cinema studies.

Starring New York

New acquisition "Starring New York: Filming the Grime and the Glamour of the Long 1970s" -- Stanley Corkin provides a new reading of the films that defined the decade. He focuses on the changing social fabric of the city by examining a number of the classic films of the time -- Midnight Cowboy (1969), Klute (1971), The Godfather Parts 1 and 2 (1972 and 1974), the blaxploitation films, The French Connection (1971), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and others.

New York City in the 1970s was quite a place -- and the films that defined the decade were exceptional.

Overhearing Film Dialogue

Written by Sarah Kozloff and published by the University of California Press in 2000 -- this book provides an interesting look at film dialogue and its importance to the visual medium. The author discusses why dialogue has been neglected in analysis and, through example, emphasizes the importance of dialogue to the narrative. The author looks at the role and nature of dialogue in four film genres: westerns, screwball comedies, gangster films, and melodramas.

You can search for memorable quotes in the IMDB -- search on film title or search Google by famous line(s) -- this is a wonderful scene from Tootsie.

Shopping Scenes

In case you didn't get enough of Black Friday and shopping in the post-Thanksgiving weekend -- check out these selected films for more shopping fun! From Buzzsugar.com

Photoplay Covers

Gorgeous Photoplay covers from the 1920s.

Victorian Popular Culture

This resource was recently added to the Columbia University Libraries website -- exceptional content of English texts from the 19th century with information and discussion on a wide-range of topics including spiritualism, mesmerism, psychical science and secular magic together with various forms of entertainment.

Jane Fonda: the Private Life of a Public Woman

"Patricia Bosworth tackles her subject’s myriad personae in an exhaustive biography of a woman whose personal growth so uncannily mirrored the social changes of her era and who, 50 years after her most controversial political actions, still manages to polarize. For the full Review in The Washington Post.

The Vogue Archive

The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue Magazine (U.S. Edition) from 1892 to the present day. The magazine serves not only as an essential resource for the study of fashion, the more than 400,000 pages provide a rich resource for gender and social and cultural studies.

The database enables browsing of individual issues and full-text searching.

Berg Fashion Library

Winner of the 2011 Dartmouth Medal, the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair Digital Award and the 2011 Bookseller FutureBook Award for Best Website, the Berg Fashion Library is the only resource to provide integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Invaluable for scholars, students, professionals, and anyone interested in dress, it includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, an extensive e-book collection, an image bank and more