New approaches to film history
- Submitting institution
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The University of Reading
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 92430
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- A collection of creative and critical works
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- 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
- These audio-visual essays were outputs of the AHRC/FAPESP-funded IntermIdia project, and both are examples of that project’s adoption of intermedial approaches to develop new methods of exploring film history. ‘Playing at the Margins’ looks at two musicians – José do Patrocínio Oliveira and Nestor Amaral – who had successful careers in Brazilian radio and musical performance and also appeared in a number of 1940s Hollywood films, though with little acknowledgement. Paying attention to these supporting musicians reveals intermedial encounters and transnational dialogue, tracing historical, ideological and aesthetic interactions, and thus extends our understanding of the films of the period and suggests strategies for further enquiry into the relationship between film and music. The USA’s Good Neighbor Policy’s impact on motion pictures was both to highlight and to hide the skills and national identity of Latin American musicians who performed in Hollywood films, and this essay explores ways in which an intermedial approach can underpin an analysis of this process.
‘Say, have you seen the Carioca?’ tests the potential of intermedial methods, and the audiovisual essay, to offer non-linear and non-hierarchical approaches to film history. The essay engages with many of the aspects of cultural history which the IntermIdia project explored: silent movie prologues, Tropicália, the musical exchanges of the Good Neighbor policy, and a range of different art forms. The argument is itself expressed intermedially, drawing on photography, film, theatrical performance, music, voice-over and on-screen caption. The motif of a mind map graphically establishes the non-linear connections that are integral to the research, charting journeys and relationships which are neither geographical nor chronological. In doing so, it moves away from the evolutionary chronologies of more traditional histories, providing new ways of thinking about old oppositions between classical and modern, centre and periphery, Hollywood and everyone else.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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