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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.
List 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.
About the author
Ciara Chambers is Lecturer in Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, Ireland, author
ofIreland in the Newsreels(2012) and screenwriter of the television series
Éire na Nuachtscannán(TG4, 2017). She is a member of the IAMHIST Council, Associate Editor of the
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Televisionand a member of the Editorial Board of
Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media.Mats Jönsson is Professor in Film Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has written three monographs, edited seven anthologies, and has published several international articles. He is a member of the editorial boards for the interface
filmarkivet.se and for the book series
Media History Archives.
Roel Vande Winkel is Assistant Professor in Film & TV Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium and at LUCA School of Arts, Belgium. He is Associate Editor of the
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and is co-editor of
Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around the World (with Daniel Biltereyst) and
Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema(with David Welch).
