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Silent Cinema, an Introduction (Distributed for the British Film Institute)

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If you have ever wondered what a film archivist does, this book is for you. If you are really serious about your passion for silent films, this book is for you. Mr Usai's concise book is packed full of research tips. There are over 50 illustrations, many in color, of all kinds of different early film frames (70mm, 35mm, 9.5mm, 28mm) plus early color processes, even early 3-D frames. He explains how the early color processes worked and how early films were assembled. He goes into great detail on how that silent film that you may watch today may be drastically altered from the original in the early 1900s. And he explains the many frustrating problems that silent film archivists encounter. He explains the pitfalls of compiling filmographies, and how some printed sources are valuable and others are worthless. If you are just becoming interested in silent films, this book will be too much for you. But if you are really interested in the "nuts and bolts" of archive work, or the detective work that we do to study silent cinema, then you won't be able to put this book down!