science

New Cinema History

New Cinema History is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand New Cinema History rather than just read about it. In short: New Cinema History is a movement of media historians dedicated to rewriting film history as a social history of film cultures, instead of merely an art history of the moving image. In the early 1990s, Annette Kuhn was among the first scholars to systematically research cinemagoing, in the context of the project "Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain." Following the example of 'New Film History', while distinguishing from…

Key takeaways

New Cinema History belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect New Cinema History to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of New Cinema History from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

New Cinema History is a movement of media historians dedicated to rewriting film history as a social history of film cultures, instead of merely an art history of the moving image. In the early 1990s, Annette Kuhn was among the first scholars to systematically research cinemagoing, in the context of the project "Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain." Following the example of 'New Film History', while distinguishing from it, Richard Maltby coined the term 'New Cinema History,' as "a body of work that focuses on the circulation and consumption of film and examines cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange." Maltby's terminology partly aimed to institutionalize and expand to an international scale his prior decade-long collaboration with Melvyn Stokes researching Hollywood film audiences, and coincided with the formation of the HoMER Network: History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception. New Cinema History asks questions like, 'Who is going to the movies? Where are the theaters located? Why are they located there? What do people remember about going to the movies?' Richard Maltby argued that the films themselves were the most “expendable element of the experience of cinema.” Oral history plays a large role in New Cinema History, and one will quickly find that people remember what it was like to go to the movies, not necessarily the films themselves.

HoMER The HoMER Network (History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception) is a project that was founded in June of 2004 in order to understand the phenomena of film going and film reception itself. The project is led by two Co-Ordinator's, Talitha Ferraz and Matthew Jones. The goal of HoMER is to create a central hub of information on the aspects of New Cinema History (film going, exhibition, and reception) from data across the Internet.

References

External links HoMER Network

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with New Cinema History

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what New Cinema History claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to New Cinema History before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about New Cinema History ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of New Cinema History

In research: New Cinema History appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses New Cinema History in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: New Cinema History is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics History of film, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for New Cinema History outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study New Cinema History in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what New Cinema History means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain New Cinema History out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is New Cinema History in simple terms?

Why does New Cinema History matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study New Cinema History?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on New Cinema History.