As Calcutta's star begins to fade, with the capital of His Majesty's India shifting to Delhi, Abani Chatterjee's is on the rise. He is well on his way to become the country's first silent screen star. But just as he is about to find fame, an occurence in the form of personal disaster strikes in the Chatterjee household.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines why thousands of cinemas opened in Britain in the space of a few years before the start of the First World War. It explains how they were the product of an investment boom which observers characterised as economically irrational and irresponsible. Burrows profiles the main groups of people who started cinema companies during this period, and those who bought shares in them, and considers whether the early cinema business might be seen as a bubble that burst. The book examines the impact of the Cinematograph Act 1909 upon the boom, and explains why British film production seemed to decline in inverse proportion to the mass expansion of the market for moving image entertainment. This account also takes a new look at the development of film distribution, the emergence of the feature film and the creation of the British Board of Film Censors. Making systematic and pioneering use of surviving business and local government records, this book will appeal to anyone interested in silent cinema, the history of film exhibition and the economics of popular culture.

Although new writing and research on British cinema has burgeoned over the last fifteen years, there has been a continued lack of single-authored books providing a coherent overview to this fascinating and elusive national cinema. Amy Sargeant's personal and entertaining history of British cinema aims to fill this gap. With its insightful decade-by-decade analysis, British Cinema is brought alive for a new generation of British cinema students and the general reader alike. Sargeant challenges Rachel Low's premise 'that few of the films made in England during the twenties were any good' by covering subjects as diverse as the art of intertitling, the narrative complexities of Shooting Stars and Brunel's burlesques. Sargeant goes onto examine among other things, the differing acting styles of Dietrich and Donat in the seminal Knight Without Armour to early promotional campaigns in the 1930s, whereas subjects ranging from product endorsement by stars to the character of the suburban wife are covered in the 1940s. The 1950s includes topics such as the effect of post-war government intervention, to Free Cinema and Lindsay Anderson's 'infuriating lapses of rigour', together with a much-needed overview of Michael Balcon's contribution to British cinema. For Sargeant, the 1960s provides an overview of the tentative relationship between film and advertising and the rise of young Turks such as Tony Richardson, Ken Loach, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg.

Following on from the first volume, this book details the engrossing story of the two camera operators sent out to the Balkans by the American film producer Charles Urban, who had established his company in London in the early 20th century. The first of them, the Englishman Charles Rider Noble, filmed as many as 38 short living pictures in Bulgaria in 1903 and 1904. The second, the Scot John Mackenzie, travelled with his bioscope through Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania in 1905. Thus, thanks to the two Britons, the first sequences of films depicting the landscapes, historical and archaeological monuments, architectural landmarks, cultural traditions and ethnographic features of the region, as well as some of its public events of the time, were shown in the peninsula. This book provides an exciting trip ‘through savage Europe’, tracing the amazing adventures of its ‘main characters’ and their life paths to their very end. Therefore, it makes absorbing reading, while preserving its status as a unique scientific work, intended for film historians, early cinema researchers, film and television archives experts, college and university lecturers, students and schoolchildren. It will be of interest to everyone who, regardless of their age, loves the ‘Seventh Art’ and adores the secrets its early history still holds.

Challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Fèrid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembène, the "Father" of African cinema.