Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture: The Imaginary of the Balkans
by Ana Grgic
Amsterdam University Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-90-485-4388-5
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK The end of the nineteenth century saw the Balkans animated with cultural movements and socio-political turmoil. Alongside these developments, the proliferation of print media and the arrival of moving images was transforming urban life and played a significant role in the creation of national culture. Based on archival research and previously overlooked footage and early press materials, Imaginary of the Balkans: Visual Culture, Modernity and Early Cinema is the first study on early cinema in the region from a transnational and cross-cultural perspective. This work investigates how the unique geopolitical positioning of the Balkan space and the multi-cultural identity of its communities influenced and shaped visual culture and early cinema development. Moreover, it examines the relationship between the new medium and visual culture through the notion of the haptic, and explores the role early cinema and foreign productions played in the construction of Balkanist and semi-colonial discourses. Reframing hierarchical relations between ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’, this book departs from approaches such as “new cinema history” and “vernacular modernity” to counter modernity discourses of “lacks and absences”, and instead, establishes new connections between moving image and print artefacts, early film practitioners and intellectuals, the socio-cultural context and cultural responses to the new visual medium.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ana Grgic is Assoc. Professor at Babes-Bolyai University. Her research on Balkan and transnational cinema, archives and memory appeared in Early Popular Visual Culture, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Film Quarterly, and KinoKultura. She is co-editor of Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits (2020), and is Associate Editor of Studies in World Cinema.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword. Travelling Down/Travelling Through by Dina Iordanova
Preface. The Balkan Imaginary of Ruins
Introduction. Charting the Terrain: Early Cinema in the Balkans
1. Visual Culture in the Balkans, Haptic Visuality and Archival Moving Images
My Journey through Savage Europe
Hapticality of Archival Moving Images
Hapticality of Visual Culture in the Balkans
The Byzantine Cultural Legacy
The Ottoman Cultural Legacy
Architecture, Fresco Painting, Icons, Textiles and Jewellery
”Image survivante” and the Legacy of Balkan Visual Culture
The Difference in Perception
2. Historicizing the Balkan Spectator and the Embodied Cinema Experience
Anticipating Cinema
The Arrival of Cinema: Haptical Encounters with Moving Images
The Spaces of Cinema and Coffee Consumption
Cinema and “Intensive Life”
Cinema in the City
Looking Back at Cinema
3. Mapping Constellations: Movement and Cross-cultural Exchange of Images, Practices and People
Journeys from the East: Cross-cultural Travels of the Shadow Puppet Theatre
The Cinematograph at the Theatre
Travelling Cinema Exhibitors and Filmmakers
The Mysterious Hungarian and the Serbian-Bulgarian Connection
The Balkan Cinema Pioneers and the Lost Gaze
Cinema and the Global Imaginary
4. Imagining the Balkans: The Cinematic Gaze from the Outside
Exoticism and the Balkans
The Orientalist Gaze in Marubi Studio Photographs
“Oriental” Austria: Cinematic Representations of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sensational Killings and Wild Insurgents at the Cinema
Charles Urban Trading Company in the Balkans
Imperial Imagination, Archives and Moving Images
The Reverberations of Balkan Wars and the Siege of Shkodra
5. Made in the Balkans: Mirroring the Self
The Desire for “Our” Views
High-life and the Pleasure of the Screen
Scientific Spectacles
Views of Ethnographic and Socio-political Significance
Pictures of Home
Constructing the Nation through Cinema
Historical Drama from Serbia
Historical Epic from Romania
Conclusion. The Future Perfect of Early Cinema in the Balkans
Bibliography
Appendix
Index
Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture: The Imaginary of the Balkans
by Ana Grgic
Amsterdam University Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-90-485-4388-5
The end of the nineteenth century saw the Balkans animated with cultural movements and socio-political turmoil. Alongside these developments, the proliferation of print media and the arrival of moving images was transforming urban life and played a significant role in the creation of national culture. Based on archival research and previously overlooked footage and early press materials, Imaginary of the Balkans: Visual Culture, Modernity and Early Cinema is the first study on early cinema in the region from a transnational and cross-cultural perspective. This work investigates how the unique geopolitical positioning of the Balkan space and the multi-cultural identity of its communities influenced and shaped visual culture and early cinema development. Moreover, it examines the relationship between the new medium and visual culture through the notion of the haptic, and explores the role early cinema and foreign productions played in the construction of Balkanist and semi-colonial discourses. Reframing hierarchical relations between ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’, this book departs from approaches such as “new cinema history” and “vernacular modernity” to counter modernity discourses of “lacks and absences”, and instead, establishes new connections between moving image and print artefacts, early film practitioners and intellectuals, the socio-cultural context and cultural responses to the new visual medium.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ana Grgic is Assoc. Professor at Babes-Bolyai University. Her research on Balkan and transnational cinema, archives and memory appeared in Early Popular Visual Culture, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Film Quarterly, and KinoKultura. She is co-editor of Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits (2020), and is Associate Editor of Studies in World Cinema.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword. Travelling Down/Travelling Through by Dina Iordanova
Preface. The Balkan Imaginary of Ruins
Introduction. Charting the Terrain: Early Cinema in the Balkans
1. Visual Culture in the Balkans, Haptic Visuality and Archival Moving Images
My Journey through Savage Europe
Hapticality of Archival Moving Images
Hapticality of Visual Culture in the Balkans
The Byzantine Cultural Legacy
The Ottoman Cultural Legacy
Architecture, Fresco Painting, Icons, Textiles and Jewellery
”Image survivante” and the Legacy of Balkan Visual Culture
The Difference in Perception
2. Historicizing the Balkan Spectator and the Embodied Cinema Experience
Anticipating Cinema
The Arrival of Cinema: Haptical Encounters with Moving Images
The Spaces of Cinema and Coffee Consumption
Cinema and “Intensive Life”
Cinema in the City
Looking Back at Cinema
3. Mapping Constellations: Movement and Cross-cultural Exchange of Images, Practices and People
Journeys from the East: Cross-cultural Travels of the Shadow Puppet Theatre
The Cinematograph at the Theatre
Travelling Cinema Exhibitors and Filmmakers
The Mysterious Hungarian and the Serbian-Bulgarian Connection
The Balkan Cinema Pioneers and the Lost Gaze
Cinema and the Global Imaginary
4. Imagining the Balkans: The Cinematic Gaze from the Outside
Exoticism and the Balkans
The Orientalist Gaze in Marubi Studio Photographs
“Oriental” Austria: Cinematic Representations of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sensational Killings and Wild Insurgents at the Cinema
Charles Urban Trading Company in the Balkans
Imperial Imagination, Archives and Moving Images
The Reverberations of Balkan Wars and the Siege of Shkodra
5. Made in the Balkans: Mirroring the Self
The Desire for “Our” Views
High-life and the Pleasure of the Screen
Scientific Spectacles
Views of Ethnographic and Socio-political Significance
Pictures of Home
Constructing the Nation through Cinema
Historical Drama from Serbia
Historical Epic from Romania
Conclusion. The Future Perfect of Early Cinema in the Balkans
Bibliography
Appendix
Index