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Devices of Curiosity
Early Cinema and Popular Science
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Book Presentation:
Devices of Curiosity excavates a largely unknown genre of early cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science. Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers made films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. This book traces the development of popular-science films over the first half of the silent era, from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910.
Devices of Curiosity also considers how popular-science films exemplify the circulation of knowledge. These films initially relied upon previous traditions such as the magic-lantern lecture for their representational strategies, and they continually had recourse to established visual iconography, but they also created novel visual paradigms and led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. Finally, the book discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. This kind of circulation is important for an understanding of the wider relevance of early popular-science films, which impacted the formation of the documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.
About the Author:
Oliver Gaycken is an Associate Professor in the English Department and a core faculty member of the Film Studies program at the University of Maryland.
Press Reviews:
"Gaycken tells a magnificent story about a group of pioneering filmmakers whose films distorted the boundaries between science and spectacle, and between education and entertainment. Devices of Curiosity uniquely uncovers the complex and unexpected ways that early popular-science films were artistically appropriated and reimagined as they appeared in cultural products far removed from their original contexts."
David A. Kirby, author of Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema
"A compelling new approach to writing the history of early science filmmaking, Devices of Curiosity shows that to understand these films we need to see them as an international phenomenon, and we need to think of them as members of the broader cinematic culture, not as a field of their own. This is a major achievement."
Tim Boon, author of Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television
"Devices of Curiosity is a meticulously researched, beautifully written book that reveals a previously unknown history of early science film. Gaycken shows us how new models of scientific knowledge came into being through the filmmaking of brilliant eccentrics who brought modern science to life."
Kirsten Ostherr, author of Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging Technologies
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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