The Rise of 'Cinema City' : The Development of the Audience for Early Cinema in Glasgow
- Submitting institution
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Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 11231731
- Type
- U - Working paper
- Platform
- Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This working paper was presented in an hour-long public talk at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as part of the institution’s Exchange Talk series in March 2020. The full text and slides from this talk are included in the submission.
My research investigates the development of the audience for early cinema in Glasgow, from the earliest developments until 1914. Given the changes it wrought on UK society, the First World War marks a clear demarcation line for my work, which takes a social-historical approach. I consider the established scholarship on the development of early cinema audiences, and overlay this with my own original archival research to explore the particular history of cinema in Glasgow. By using a variety of local sources, such as newspaper archives, local authority minutes, and audience recollections, I have been able to show that although there were commonalities between Glasgow and various other centres such as Aberdeen, Manhattan, or London, there were also conditions that were specific and unique to Glasgow.
A detailed account of how cinema developed in the city may act as a corrective to, for example, the ‘London-centric’ assumption that cinema developed everywhere in the UK as it did in London. As the first city-level study, the work brings clarity and acts as a corrective to several misconceptions and inconsistencies in previous accounts. More important than that, though, is the demonstration of the relationship between film and its audience as well as relationships within the Glasgow audience itself.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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