Immediate mediation : a narrative of the newsreel and the film
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines the ways in which newsreels were central to modes of reportage and visual display in the interwar years. Drawing from primary and archival sources, and looking directly to the films themselves, this study imparts a new understanding of newsreels' unique, compiled, nonfiction narrative style. This dissertation uses the visual and phenomenological experience of the cinema to understand how interwar newsreels were not simply ephemeral (and literally disposable) documents of the mundane, but were a true vernacular—a common language of contemporary history. At their most basic level, newsreels were formal groupings of eight to ten "stories" designed to bring the outside world into the film theatre; they were instruments both of journalism and cinema and are now forgotten examples of the inherent hybridity of motion pictures. Newsreels' compilation structure, a relic of cinema's earliest years, and their content, a highly mediated refraction of contemporary experience, together represent a singular mode of historical documentation and narration. Discussing newsreels' relationship to contemporary reportage media, their place in cinema history, and the implications of their status as compilation films underlines newsreels' kaleidoscopic form and function. Widely consumed and eagerly anticipated, interwar newsreels were documents constructed in a medium whose burgeoning popularity and ubiquity has become emblematic of its specific historical moment.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Levavy, Sara Beth |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History. |
| Primary advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Levi, Pavle |
| Thesis advisor | Renov, Michael, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Turner, Fred |
| Advisor | Levi, Pavle |
| Advisor | Renov, Michael, 1950- |
| Advisor | Turner, Fred |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sara Beth Levavy. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Sara Beth Levavy
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...