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This study examines the traditional claim that in 1903, while an employee of the Edison Manufacturing Company, Edwin Stanton Porter discovered the principle of editing construction which made possible the fictional motion picture narrative. It will show that Edison studio policy in the period would have discouraged such an achievement and that the crucial first step in the elaboration of the early film narrative was the development of a compositional aesthetic derived from the staged or 'fake' newsreel. Based on that aesthetic between 1904 and 1907 film directors including Edwin Porter turned out a short-lived, tableau-action narrator-dependent story film in actuality style that became the basis of the nickelodeon boom dating from 1906. The social and industrial pressures engendered by that success led to the fragmentation of the complete action tableau and the displacement of the tableau narrative by a shot-dependent, autonomous narrative constrained by the formal features of actuality composition. The final chapter analyzes a leading example, the 1907 emergence of parallel editing in the production of one-reel screen tales of last-minute rescue.

This dissertation provides a cultural history of the first North American film archive, the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), established in 1935. It asks a seemingly simple question: How was it that small, popular, debased, ephemeral objects like films came to be treated as precious, complex and valuable historical objects? It therefore explores how ideas about archiving (seeing and saving films) intersect with practices of collection and exhibition, by mapping the evolution of key institutional discourses and cultural trends from the birth of the medium to the Film Library. It considers links between the archive and longstanding concepts in film culture---utopianism, cinematic knowledge and art. It attends to the more specific convergence of interests---public and private, national and international---which impacted on the Film Library's institutional shape and on the debates in which it was embroiled. This dissertation shows that despite the Film Library's home within an institution of modern art, film's archival value was associated more with the urgency of recovering a history that had been lost and less with an art that had been neglected. This contention is further supported by an examination of the Film Library's first circulating film programs and their public reception. This dissertation postulates that the library's development of an unprecedented and broad acquisition policy as well as an active exhibition program made it more than a mere reflection of the uniquely historical and modern attributes of the cinema: a meeting of aesthetic ferment, technology, commercialism, propaganda, popularity and information. It concludes that the library was an important intervention into these discourses marking with institutional certainty the contested nature of film as a cultural object as well as the ongoing project to understand it.

Thesis (Ph. D., Committee on Degrees in the History of American Civilization)--Harvard University, 2006. / "May 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-456).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Philip Rosen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-262). Also available online.

This study explores the reasons for the rise in independent film's popularity, which have created a unique Hollywood phenomenon, the successful "mini-major" independent studio, dedicated to both art and commerce. Chapters cover the history of independent film, characteristics of both independent and mainstreamfilms with regards to financing, acquisition, distribution and marketing, trends within independent film in the late 1980s and 1990s, crucial distributors and landmark independent films, and key growth areas in the future for independent film.

The purpose of this study is (1) to examine mainstream studio films and their marketing (2) to examine independent films and their marketing (3) to explore the marketing challenges of independent films (4) to explore new developments in independent film and the emergence of crossover films (5) to explore the benefits of alliances between the major studios and independent film distributors (6) to examine the diminishing differences between major studio films and independent films.

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This study will focus on Quentin Tarantino's three most recent films: Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007). These works are significant, in that they present a marked departure from the director's earlier films. Specifically, they offer portrayals of resourceful and powerful female protagonists, in stark contrast to the frequently neglected and marginalized women of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Buttressed by a mixture of psychoanalytic feminist and postmodern theories, I will perform a careful textual analysis of these latest films. In particular, I intend to uncover the ways in which Tarantino's films support and/or subvert traditionally oppressive conceptions of gender. / by Marc R. Fedderman. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.