From Méliès to New Media Spectral Projections

Film history has only recently begun to understand that new media forms are not only indebted to, but firmly embedded within the traditions of early film culture. Adopting a metahistory, the author presents a comparative examination of old and new cinema, shedding light on a variety of films and new media forms. included here are theatrical experiments with light and their connections with contemporary music videos, silent cinema and their digital restorations, German Expressionist cinema and multi-screen, post-noir film, early experiments with editing and the development of "assaultive montage", celluloid expanded well beyond traditional screen ratios, the permeable frames of films exhibited in the café and in the gallery, and interactive digital screens that revise experiments in pre-cinema. Metahistory provides an approach that uncovers a constellation of older and newer cinematic forms, helping to illuminate otherwise hidden histories. It envisages the potential of new discoveries that foreground forgotten or marginalized contributions to history. This book is an exploration of the materials and technologies that can be used to explore the intersections of celluloid and digital films. This book presents a unique comparison of some of the earliest cinematic experiments and their related digital films.