Description
This volume addresses the underscrutinised topic of cinema newsreels. These short, multi-themed newsfilms, usually accompanied by explanatory intertitles or voiceovers, were a central part of the filmgoing experience around the world from 1910 through the late 1960s, and in many cases even later. As the only source of moving image news available before the widespread advent of television, newsreels are important social documents, recording what the general public was told and shown about the events and personalities of the day. Often disregarded as quirky or trivial, they were heavily utilised as propaganda vehicles, offering insights into the socio-political norms reflected in cinema during the first half of the twentieth century. The book presents a range of current research being undertaken in newsreel studies internationally and makes a case for a reconsideration of the importance of newsreels in the wider landscape of film history.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Wofull News from Wales: Details at 11. News, Newsreels, Bulletins and Documentaries.- 3. The Newsreel Audience.- 4. Around the World: The First Norwegian Newsreel, 1930–1940.- 5. The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis of the Suez War in East and West German Newsreels, 1956.- 6. Martin Luther King’s Assassination in Spain’s NO-DOs andin Bulgaria’s Kinopregledi.- 7. Matrices for Non-Fiction: Dziga Vertov and the Kino-Nedelia Newsreels.- 8. More Than Goebbels Bargained For: Nazi Newsreel Dissemination in Occupied Denmark and the Golden Age of Danish Documentary.- 9. Screening War and Peace: Newsreel Pragmatism in Neutral Sweden, September 1939 and May 1945.- 10. The Legal Settlement and Reconstruction in the Norwegian Newsreel Norsk Filmrevy, 1945–1949.- 11. Advertising and Self-Reference in the West German NewsreelNeue Deutsche Wochenschau in the 1950s and 1960s.- 12. Newsreel Production, Distribution and Exhibition in Belgium, 1908–1994.- 13. Researching the Issued Content of American Newsreels.- 14. The Irish Question: Newsreels and National Identity.- 15. If You Build It, Will They Come? Researching British Newsreels.
