Unidentified photographer, Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1895. Gelatin silver print. George Eastman Museum.
Unidentified photographer, Temple Theatre, Canandaigua, NY, ca. 1913. Gelatin silver print. George Eastman Museum.
Silent movies, from their earliest days as peep-show attractions to main events at sumptuous movie palaces, were exhibited in a variety of public spaces. Showcases for exciting new technologies, these spaces also reflected the audiences that the movies appealed to: they embraced recently arrived immigrants and lower-class audiences and courted women viewers—a development that in turn helped to change perceptions of women and reshape their participation in family, business, and political life.
However democratic moviegoing may have seemed on the surface, this most "American" of mass entertainments wasn't entirely open to all. De facto segregation and Jim Crow laws meant Black moviegoers were either relegated to a theater's upper balconies or permitted to freely attend only during off-hours—the so-called midnight rambles. Partially as a response to this segregation, an independent cinema emerged that not only catered specifically to Black audiences with more honest depictions of Black life in America, but did so in unique spaces which helped foster the development of Black urban communities.
Please join Ken Fox, head of library and archives at the George Eastman Museum, for a discussion of this fascinating history of early cinema exhibition and the ways in which it both affected and reflected its audiences.
This presentation is part of a new Finger Lakes Film Trail program series, Making Noise about Silent Film: Conversations about Cinema, Culture, and Social Change, sponsored by Humanities New York, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Co-sponsored by the George Eastman Museum.
Please note: Masks, proof of COVID vaccination, and photo ID are required for all museum programs in the Dryden Theatre.