Researching Historical Screen Audiences

"Showcasing current research and contemporary debate in the field of screen history and audience studies, Researching Historical Screen Audiences draws upon a wide variety of previously untapped sources -- including photographs, maps, Mass Observation reports, diaries, fan letters, cinema records and original oral testimonies -- to explore the challenges and pleasures of conducting research in this field. Containing twelve new essays from an international group of leading and emerging scholars, the book explores and assesses the current status and shape of the field of historical audience research, showcasing new research which foregrounds the transnational and multi-cultural dimensions of past cinemagoing, the roles played by management personnel and marketing campaigns, and the currently under-explored area of the past reception of home video."--Publisher description List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction PART I BEING CREATIVE IN HISTORICAL AUDIENCE RESEARCH: RE-EVALUATING THE FIELD 1. Audience as Palimpsest, or the Structures of Cinematic Feeling: On Historical Film Audience Research and Cinema’s Imaginative Power 2. From Cinema Culture to Cinema Memory: A Conceptual and Methodological Trajectory 3. Constructing Cinema Audience Histories: Methodological Choices and Challenges PART II RECONSIDERING NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CINEMAGOING HISTORIES 4. Cinemas and Cinema Audiences in the ‘Third Space’ in Warsaw, 1908–1939 5. German Films in Brazil: Immigration, Associations and National Film Culture 6. Emotional Communities in the Cinema: Tracing Emotion in Mass Observation Cinema Records, 1937–1950 PART III SHAPING AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS: CINEMA MANAGERS AND MARKETING STRATEGIES 7. ‘Make Your Public Curious’: Cinema Management, Film Advertising and Audience Taste in England, c. 1920–c. 1960 8. Harry Sanders: Remembering a Life in Cinema Management 9. The Yellow Teddybears : Exploitation as Education PART IV HOME VIEWING CONTEXTS AND AUDIENCE MEMORIES 10. Archives, Sources and Memories for a History of Early Italian TV Audiences 11. The Exorcist in the Home: Remembering Parental Regulation 12. Childhood Memories of Horror Films in the Home: Questions, Patterns and Contexts Index Considers the challenges of historical audience research in the field of screen studies.