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mcgillianaire[SOURCE]
"On this day in 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis. The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five cents. Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission cost and the Greek word for “theater”) soon spread across the country. Their usual offerings included live vaudeville acts as well as short films. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by large modern theaters.
Inventors in Europe and the United States, including Thomas Edison, had been developing movie cameras since the late 1880s. Early films could only be viewed as peep shows, but by the late 1890s movies could be projected onto a screen. Audiences were beginning to attend public demonstrations, and several movie “factories” (as the earliest production studios were called) were formed. In 1896, the Edison Company inaugurated the era of commercial movies, showing a collection of moving images as a minor act in a vaudeville show that also included live performers, among whom were a Russian clown, an “eccentric dancer” and a “gymnastic comedian.” The film, shown at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York City, featured images of dancers, ocean waves and gondolas.
Short films, usually less than a minute long, became a regular part of vaudeville shows at the turn of the century as “chasers” to clear out the audience after a show. A vaudeville performers’ strike in 1901, however, left theaters scrambling for acts, and movies became the main event. In the earliest years, vaudeville theater owners had to purchase films from factories via mail order, rather than renting them, which made it expensive to change shows frequently. Starting in 1902, Henry Miles of San Francisco began renting films to theaters, forming the basis of today’s distribution system. The first theater devoted solely to films, The Electric Theater in Los Angeles, opened in 1902. Housed in a tent, the theater’s first screening included a short called New York in a Blizzard. Admission cost about 10 cents for a one-hour show. Nickelodeons developed soon after, offering both movies and live acts."
"On this day in 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis. The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five cents. Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission cost and the Greek word for “theater”) soon spread across the country. Their usual offerings included live vaudeville acts as well as short films. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by large modern theaters.
Inventors in Europe and the United States, including Thomas Edison, had been developing movie cameras since the late 1880s. Early films could only be viewed as peep shows, but by the late 1890s movies could be projected onto a screen. Audiences were beginning to attend public demonstrations, and several movie “factories” (as the earliest production studios were called) were formed. In 1896, the Edison Company inaugurated the era of commercial movies, showing a collection of moving images as a minor act in a vaudeville show that also included live performers, among whom were a Russian clown, an “eccentric dancer” and a “gymnastic comedian.” The film, shown at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York City, featured images of dancers, ocean waves and gondolas.
Short films, usually less than a minute long, became a regular part of vaudeville shows at the turn of the century as “chasers” to clear out the audience after a show. A vaudeville performers’ strike in 1901, however, left theaters scrambling for acts, and movies became the main event. In the earliest years, vaudeville theater owners had to purchase films from factories via mail order, rather than renting them, which made it expensive to change shows frequently. Starting in 1902, Henry Miles of San Francisco began renting films to theaters, forming the basis of today’s distribution system. The first theater devoted solely to films, The Electric Theater in Los Angeles, opened in 1902. Housed in a tent, the theater’s first screening included a short called New York in a Blizzard. Admission cost about 10 cents for a one-hour show. Nickelodeons developed soon after, offering both movies and live acts."
film history and cultural change/propaganda (sp?)
Date: 2015-06-21 10:59 am (UTC)Peace,
Shira "Holocene/Human Era" Dest.
21.6.12015 HE
Re: film history and cultural change/propaganda (sp?)
Date: 2015-06-26 08:45 pm (UTC)I never watched The 300 and I'm glad I haven't either!
Propaganda through film was especially prevalent in the state my parents are from, Tamil Nadu in southern India. Even today, all the chief ministers of the state since 1967 have been actors or screenwriters of celluloid fame. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, they used cinema as a way to socially engineer a cultural revolution. Now they are just corrupt and feeding off the wealth they have accumulated over the decades. Sadly this is the story of humankind.
Re: film history and cultural change/propaganda (sp?)
Date: 2015-06-29 01:37 pm (UTC)Kanal D is one of the most popular tv channels in Turkey (subjectively speaking, and by hearsay from my friends and neighbors when I worked in Istanbul and then Izmir 2005-6).
The show Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mother) has been compared to Tabitha, I think, or Samantha, but is rather different, imho, from any American show I saw as a kid in that the show seems to deliberately play up the inter-cultural/racial differences and opposition to the marriage between a 'fairy' woman and a human man.
In the same vein, Yabanci Damat is about a Turkish girl and a Greek boy who must overcome the opposition of both familes in order to get married, and the changes in both familes and surrounding entourage that results.
Both wonderful shows, and both quite positive.
Interesting -all of the key ministers were in the film business? And I thought politicians of all nationalities liked to study Law! Interesting. That says quite alot about the influence of Bollywood, is it?
I just saw a kitchy/campy but nice film called Blast, I think (I saw it in French, so the title was translated ... will srch if you want) -basically a re-casting of a superhero story, but set in Mumbai, and with surprisingly good ethics and themes implanted. I liked it inspite of myself! :-)
Yes, sad state of humankind, the feeding, but I like to hope that by sustaining workers cooperatives, food coops, Triodos Bank and small/local credit unions, and above all by working to help ourselves think more in terms of all of humanity, we can change the state of humankind, re-write the current story, no?
Shira