Exposing the Film Apparatus

Giovanna Fossati is Professor of Media Heritage, Technology, and Culture at Utrecht University. Formerly Chief Curator of Eye Filmmuseum and Professor of Film Heritage at the University of Amsterdam, her research focuses on audiovisual archiving with a global and sustainable approach. Annie van den Oever is Distinguished Visiting Professor (University of Johannesburg) and, until recently, Professor of Film (University Groningen) and Extraordinary Professor of Film and Visual Media (University of the Free State). She published Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory in 2022, with Andreas Fickers, and Technics in 2024, with Nicholas Baer.

"[This] rich and extensive collection edited by Giovanna Fossati and Annie Van Den Oever represents a major book that significantly maps and expands perspectives and trajectories in the archaeology and history of technological media, and it represents a thought-provoking reflexion on the digital transition in the archival world." - Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Andrea Mariani, Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy. 'If dreams come true! The long desired collaboration between film archivists and film scholars has never been as fully realized as in this work, which is, itself, a genuine "research laboratory." Adopting an approach that constantly combines fundamental and applied research, the "materiality of the medium" is studied here in an entirely novel way. Starting with the digital turn, the essential problems of technique and technology have (finally!) returned to academic zeitgeist. Not surprising since the digital, which transformed our habits and customs as spectators and researchers, promotes a daily hands-on contact, producing a shockwave in the process. By "bridging archival and scholarly work on film apparatus" and recognizing the impact of the material turn (see the Introduction), Exposing the Film Apparatus will undoubtedly contribute to the upheaval of research methods and practices in cinema. ' -- André Gaudreault, Canada Research Chair in Cinema and Media Studies, Université de Montréal. 'We are only a handful of decades into the adventure of moving images, yet already there are so many common misunderstandings about the contexts in which and for which they have been produced. This is in large part because we neglect the technologies of moving image production. This excellent collection fizzes with new approaches to understanding the apparatuses of cinema. These machines once gave life to images; now it must be our mission to give life back to these machines.' -- John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway University of London. "This eclectic series of essays avoids the danger of prescribing how we each experience but more likely use the moving image, whilst providing a matrix of approaches to thinking about how and why those experiences are the way they are. As such, they will engage graduate and post-graduate audiences." - Mike Leggett, Leonardo Reviews "The 29 contributions in Exposing the Film Apparatus are dedicated to detailed qualitative studies, which aim to explore rather than synthesise." - Fotografie und Film, original review in German "A collection [of essays] that emphasises the importance of preservation" - Boekman reviews, original review in Dutch

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Exposing the Film Apparatus Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever Small and Portable Cinema in My Pocket Roger Odin Uncanny Encounter: The iPhone and the Debrie Camera Martine Beugnet The Erasure of Analog Film Projection Leenke Ripmeester Ghosts of the Past: Frame Rates, Cranking and Access to Early Cinema Marek Jancovic Vitascope Movie-Maker: A Ludic Historiography Guy Edmonds Contextualizing the Apparatus: Film in the Turn-of-the-Century Sears, Roebuck & Co. Consumers Guide's Department of Special Public Entertainment Outfits and Supplies William Uricchio Widescreen Anamorphic Lens Steven Willemsen The Introduction of Ciné-Kodak: "The Long-Awaited Answer" Susan Aasman The Orbit and Single Shot Cinema Annelies van Noortwijk The Video Compact Disc and the Digital Preservation of Indonesian National Cinema History Ari Purnama "Bolex Artists": Bolex Cameras, Amateurism, and the New York Film Avant-Garde Barbara Turquier The Tripod or "When Professionals Turn Amateur": A Plea for an Amateur Film Archaeology Alexandra Schneider Imagining the User of Portapak: Countercultural Agency for Everyone! Tom Slootweg Edison's Ideal and the Visual Technics of the Sublime Gert Jan Harkema and Amanda du Preez Medium and Not Easily Portable A Legal Alien: The 16mm Projector in the Classroom Eef Masson The Analog Film Projector in Marijke van Warmerdam's Digitized Film Installations Julia Noordegraaf The Illusion of Movement, the Illusion of Color: The Kinemacolor Projector, Archaeology, and Epistemology Benoît Turquety Stenciling Technologies and the Hybridized Image in Early Cinema Joshua Yumibe Understanding Early Film Sound: The Biophon Sound-on-Disc System Sonia Campanini Digital Frontiers: 2k to 4k and Beyond Ian Christie Large and Not Portable Geyer "Rekord" Continuous Contact Printer (c. 1935) Martin Koerber Jean-Luc Godard, the Video Editing Table and HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA as a Laboratory for an Art of Archives Céline Scemama Famous Facials: How We Got Ready for the Close-Up Jan Holmberg Digital Cinema, or: What Happens to the Dispositif? Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk 3D Imaging Technology's Narrative Appropriation in Cinema Miklós Kiss Extending the Archival Life of Film: Presenting Film History with EYE Film Institute Netherlands' Panorama Caylin Smith The Database of Technical Devices: Describing, Cataloging, and Using Technical Devices in the Museum's Collections Rommy Albers and Soeluh van den Berg The Invisible Cinema Julian Hanich A Tale of Two Times: Augmented Reality as Archival Laboratory Nanna Verhoeff Notes General Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index of Names Index of Films