[Commlist] new book: An International Study of Film Museums

An International Study of Film Museums

Rinella Cere


Book Description

An International Study of Film Museums examines how cinema has been 
transformed and strengthened through museological and archival 
activities since its origins and asks what paradoxes may be involved, if 
any, in putting cinema into a museum.

Cere explores the ideas that were first proposed during the first half 
of the twentieth century around the need to establish national museums 
of cinema and how these have been adapted in the subsequent development 
of the five case studies presented here: four in Europe and one in the 
USA. The book traces the history of the five museums' foundation, 
exhibitions, collections, and festivals organised under their aegis and 
it asks how they resolve the tensions between cinema as an aesthetic 
artefact – now officially recognised as part of humanity's cultural 
heritage – and cinema as an entertainment and leisure activity. It also 
gives an account of recent developments around unifying collections, 
exhibition activities and archives in one national film centre that 
offers the general public a space totally devoted to film and 
cinematographic culture.

An International Study of Film Museums provides a unique comparative 
study of museums of cinema in varying national contexts. The book will 
be of interest to academics and students around the world who are 
engaged in the study of museums, archives, heritage, film, history and 
visual culture.


Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Birth of the Museum of Cinema

Chapter 2 The National Science and Media Museum

Chapter 3 Who is guarding the treasures now? The Cinémathèque 
Française-Musée du Cinéma

Chapter 4 ‘Thought of a museum of cinema’: the Museo Nazionale del 
Cinema in Turin

Chapter 5 The Museu del cinema in Girona, Catalonia

Chapter 6 Eastman House: an international museum of photography and cinema

Conclusion


Reviews

"In An International Study of Film Museums, Rinella Cere provides a 
fascinating account of the various and sometimes conflicting impulses, 
interests and policies behind the development of film museums as sites 
for the presentation of cinema’s history and heritage. While some 
museums have been primarily devoted to preserving the technologies for 
film production and exhibition, others like the Cinémathèque Française 
have seen their principal role as being the acquisition, preservation 
and display of films of the past. Still others have sought to curate the 
social history of cinema and its audiences, while the critics of film 
museums – among them Francois Truffaut and Joseph Losey – have seen them 
as futile attempts "to preserve a transient art," no more than "a 
gimmick for tourists." The Love of Cinema explores the diverse 
conceptions of what a film museum might be and the motives and 
personalities of the dedicated individuals who created five of the 
world’s leading film museums, largely without state support or public 
funding, in France, Britain, Italy, Catalonia and the US. In the breadth 
of its coverage and its illuminating detail, Cere’s work demonstrates 
how our understanding of cinema’s archaeology and evolution has been 
deepened by the archival and museological activities of the institutions 
she examines." – Richard Maltby, Flinders University, South Australia

"An important work on the world of the film museum based on original 
research on institutions including the Cinémathèque Française, Britain’s 
National Science and Media Museum, and the George Eastman Museum in the 
United States, and key individuals such as Ernest Lindgren and Henri 
Langlois. Dr Cere deftly combines accounts of the historical development 
of her case studies with critical reflection on the different and 
contrasting notions of the film museum embodied in their practices. The 
cultural enterprise of establishing an institution incorporating a film 
archive, physical apparatuses such as cameras and projectors, and the 
numerous forms of documentation (studio records, memoirs) relevant to 
the cinema, is a complex process and Dr Cere’s work reveals the ways in 
which it has been interpreted in different ways in different countries 
with different film heritages." – Tom Ryall, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

https://www.routledge.com/An-International-Study-of-Film-Museums/Cere/p/book/9780415432252

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