By Bernie DeGroat
News and Information Services
In the 100 years since the first movie theater opened to the paying public in the basement of a Paris cafe, “the growth and development of the movies has been a bumpy ride beset with obstacles and detours,” say University of Michigan film scholars.
In a special double issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR) that celebrates the first century of cinema, co-editors Laurence Goldstein, professor of English, and Ira Konigsberg, professor of English and of film/video studies, say we still have much to learn about the movies.
“The centennial year of 1995 offers a perfect opportunity to learn more, much more, not only about the history, technology and art of film, but about its psychological and philosophical impact on the audiences of the past and present,” they note.
The first of MQR’s two-part “The Movies: A Centennial Issue” features an anthology of essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and graphics on the subject of film.
“The issue was undertaken not to assert a monolithic interpretation of film history or film art, or to provide coverage for every significant topic related to the cinema, but in order to offer a forum for writers seeking to enlarge the horizons of what we see and what we know as film experience,” Goldstein and Konigsberg say.
In addition to the co-editors, other U-M contributors to the first part of the special issue include Diane Kirkpatrick, chair and professor of art history; Gaylyn Studlar, director and professor of film/video studies; and playwright Arthur Miller, a 1938 U-M graduate.
Others whose works appear include Margaret Atwood, Tom Gunning and Andrew Sarris, as well as previously unpublished writing on film by Aldous Huxley and Vachel Lindsay.
Part one is now available at local bookstores and at the MQR office in Room 3032, Rackham Building. For information, call 764-9265. The second part will be available in January 1996.
