No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than 500 films has been the subject of a systematic analysis and the vast majority of his other works stills await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field.

No other silent film director has been as extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than five hundred films has been the subject of a systematic analysis, and the vast majority of his other works still await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multivolume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the ongoing retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century.

No other silent film director has been as extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than five hundred films has been the subject of a systematic analysis, and the vast majority of his other works still await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from 'Professional Jealousy '(1907) to 'The' 'Struggle '(1931) - will be explored in this multivolume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the ongoing retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century. The latest volume assesses Griffith's work in 1914-15. It includes an extensive, multi-authored evaluation of 'The Birth of' 'a Nation.'

No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than five hundred films had been the subject of a systematic analysis. Now, for the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from 'Professional Jealousy '(1907) to 'The Struggle' (1931) - is explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the ongoing retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, 'The Griffith Project 'is now an indispensable guide to his work. This is the final volume of the project.

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT Paolo Cherchi Usai, General Editor Volume 12: Essays on D.W. Griffith Edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai and Cynthia Rowell With contributions by William M. Drew, Helmut Färber, André Gaudreault, Philippe Gauthier, Lea Jacobs, Joyce Jesionowski, Charlie Keil, Richard Koszarski, Arthur Lennig, Pat Loughney, David Mayer, Russell Merritt, Jan Olsson, Paul Spehr, Yuri Tsivian, Linda Williams In early 1996, an international group of 35 specialists in silent cinema volunteered to write commentaries on more than six hundred films directed, written, produced and supervised by D.W. Griffith – or featuring him as a performer – for the eleven-volume series The Griffith Project, the largest monograph ever assembled on an individual film director, in conjunction with the massive retrospective held at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival from 1996 to 2008. All authors involved in The Griffith Project were bound to strict editorial rules, most notably the fact that all titles in the series would be assigned to them in pre-determined groups rather than as a result of their own individual preference for this or that specific entry. The patience and commitment demonstrated by all scholars in this endeavor requires at least a symbolic recognition. We therefore invited the members of the project team to write an essay on a (D.W. Griffith-related) topic of their own choice. The papers included in this volume constitute the response to our carte blanche invitation. Our offer was also extended to other experts on D.W. Griffith who, for various reasons, were unable to participate in The Griffith Project but consistently supported it with their generous advice and insight. This volume brings The Griffith Project to completion, as 2008 sees the last installment of the D.W. Griffith program at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival with the screening of his films produced between 1925 and 1931. Not surprisingly, twelve years of research on D.W. Griffith have unearthed an impressive wealth of knowledge but also an equally amazing array of new questions, certainly enough of them to fill several more volumes. Some of them (including the increasingly complex issue of D.W. Griffith's role as production supervisor) are only introduced or barely mentioned here, but we are confident that what we have called the 'Griffith Project' will continue – at the Giornate and elsewhere – with more research and newly found or preserved prints. PAOLO CHERCHI USAI is Director of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. He is co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House (Rochester, New York). He directed the experimental feature film Passio (2007). His latest book is David Wark Griffith (Editrice Il Castoro, 2008).

Tracing the international consumption, distribution, and cultural importance of silent film serials in the 1910s and 1920s, Canjels provides an exciting new understanding of the cultural dimension and the cultural transformation and circulation of media forms. Specifically, he demonstrates that the serial film form goes far beyond the well-known American two-reel serial—the cliffhanger. Throughout the book, Canjels focuses on the biggest producers of serials, America, France, and Germany, while imported serials, such as those in the Netherlands, are also examined. This research offers new views on the serial work of well known directors as D.W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, and Fritz Lang, while foregrounding the importance of lesser known directors such as Louis Feuillade or Joe May. In the early twentieth-century, serial productions were constantly undergoing change and were not merely distributed in their original form upon import. As adjusted serials were present in large quantities or confronted different social spaces, nationalistic feelings and views stimulated by the unrest of World War I and the expanding American film industry could be incorporated and attached to the serial form. Serial productions were not only adaptable to local discourses, they could actively stimulate and interact as well, influencing reception and further film production. By examining the distribution, reception, and cultural contexts of American and European serials in various countries, this cross-cultural research makes both local and global observations. Canjels thus offers a highly relevant case study of transnational, transcultural and transmedia relations.

In Intolerance, Polemics, and Debate in Antiquity politico-cultural, philosophical, and religious forms of critical conversation in the ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, Graeco-Roman, and early-Islamic world are discussed. The contributions enquire into the boundaries between debate, polemics, and intolerance, and address their manifestations in both philosophy and religion.

No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than 500 films has been the subject of a systematic analysis and the vast majority of his other works still awaits proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith--from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931)--will be explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field.

The image that appears on the movie screen is the direct and tangible result of the joint efforts of the director and the cinematographer. A Hidden History of Film Style is the first study to focus on the collaborations between directors and cinematographers, a partnership that has played a crucial role in American cinema since the early years of the silent era. Christopher Beach argues that an understanding of the complex director-cinematographer collaboration offers an important model that challenges the pervasive conventional concept of director as auteur. Drawing upon oral histories, early industry trade journals, and other primary materials, Beach examines key innovations like deep focus, color, and digital cinematography, and in doing so produces an exceptionally clear history of the craft. Through analysis of several key collaborations in American cinema from the silent era to the late twentieth centuryÑsuch as those of D. W. Griffith and Billy Bitzer, William Wyler and Gregg Toland, and Alfred Hitchcock and Robert BurksÑthis pivotal book underlines the importance of cinematographers to both the development of cinematic technique and the expression of visual style in film.

An actor, a vaudevillian, and a dramatist before he became a filmmaker, D. W. Griffith used the resources of theatre to great purpose and to great ends. In pioneering the quintessentially modern medium of film from the 1890s to the 1930s, he drew from older, more broadly appealing stage forms of melodrama, comedy, vaudeville, and variety. In Stagestruck Filmmaker, David Mayer brings Griffith’s process vividly to life, offering detailed and valuable insights into the racial, ethnic, class, and gender issues of these transitional decades. Combining the raw materials of theatre, circus, minstrelsy, and dance with the newer visual codes of motion pictures, Griffith became the first acknowledged artist of American film. Birth of a Nation in particular demonstrates the degree to which he was influenced by the racist justifications and distorting interpretations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Moving through the major phases of Griffith’s career in chapters organized around key films or groups of films, Mayer provides a mesmerizing account of the American stage and cinema in the final years of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Griffith’s relationship to the theatre was intricate, complex, and enduring. Long recognized as the dominant creative figure of American motion pictures, throughout twenty-six years of making more than five hundred films he pillaged, adapted, reshaped, revitalized, preserved, and extolled. By historicizing his representations of race, ethnicity, and otherness, Mayer places Griffith within an overall template of American life in the years when film rivaled and then surpassed the theatre in popularity.