[Commlist] New book: Bad Film Histories: Ethnography and the Early Archive

We would like to announce a new publication from the University of 
Minnesota Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*Bad Film Histories***

Ethnography and the Early Archive

*Katherine Groo***

*_https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/bad-film-histories_**__*

A daring, deep investigation into ethnographic cinema that challenges 
standard ways of writing film history and breaks important new ground in 
understanding archives /Bad Film Histories/ is a vital work that 
unsettles the authority of the archive. Katherine Groo daringly takes 
readers to the margins of the film record, addressing the 
undertheorization of film history and offering a rigorous corrective. 
Taking ethnographic cinema as a crucial case study, Groo challenges 
standard ways of thinking and writing about film history and questions 
widespread assumptions about what film artifacts are and what makes them 
meaningful. Rather than filling holes, Groo endeavors to understand the 
imprecisions and absences that define film history and its archives. 
/Bad Film Histories/ draws on numerous works of ethnographic cinema, 
from Edward S. Curtiss In the /Land of the Head Hunters/, to a 
Citroën-sponsored “croisière” across Africa, to the extensive archives 
of the Maison Lumière and the Musée Albert-Kahn, to dozens of expedition 
films from the 1910s and 1920s. The project is deeply grounded in 
poststructural approaches to history, and throughout Groo draws on these 
frameworks to offer innovative and accessible readings that explain 
ethnographic cinemas destabilizing energies. As Groo describes, 
ethnographic works are mostly untitled, unauthored, seemingly infinite 
in number, and largely unrestored even in their digital afterlives. Her 
examination of ethnographic cinema provides necessary new thought for 
both film scholars and those who are thrilled by cinemas boundless 
possibilities. In so doing, she boldly reexamines what early 
ethnographic cinema is and how these films produce meaning, challenging 
the foundations of film history and prevailing approaches to the archive.

*Katherine Groo*is assistant professor of film and media studies at 
Lafayette College.

With all best wishes,

Combined Academic Publishers

*University of Minnesota Press**| February 2019 | 360pp | 9781517900335 
| PB | £21.99**

*Price subject to change.

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