A news item published in the November 1909 issue of Nordisk Filmtidning, the very first Swedish film journal, illustrates in a humorous way the apprehension and critiques provoked by film censorship at the time of its establishment.1 This news item, or rather this anecdote, from Kristiania, Norway’s capital (now known as Oslo), concerns a censorship decision that had an astonishing outcome. The (supposedly quite beautiful) film discussed in the news item showed a festival in Tyrol held in memory of the Austrian war of liberation of 1809. The festival closed with a reenactment of the execution of Andreas Hofer, which was naturally included in the film. However, the censor in charge, a policeman, found this final scene too barbaric and prohibited its public exhibition. The scene was removed. However, according to the reporter, the manager of the moving picture theater that was about to screen the film decided to make fun of the policeman’s mild and sensitive mind. Thus, when the film reached the point where the soldiers presented their weapons and aimed, a newly inserted intertitle appeared. It stated: “The execution of the death sentence of Andreas Hofer has been canceled by decision of the Kristiania police.”2 This rather drastic course of action by the theater manager brought about much laughter in Kristiania and later on in Sweden as well.

Since the early 1900s, Swedish industries with the steel industry as the perhaps most prominent, were together with an energy market in transition pivotal for societal changes.  With very limited deposits of coal and oil but vast resources of waterpower in the north of Sweden, or “white coal” as it was called, the power company Vattenfall became a major force for power supplies and electrification of Swedish industries. The close ties between the steel industry and Vattenfall’s expansion of hydroelectric power including the electrification of the railway Malmbanan that was inaugurated in 1903 for the strategic transportation of iron ore, from the northern Swedish town Luleå, and Riksgränsen to Narvik at the Norwegian Atlantic coast, where decisive for the rapid growth of infrastructure. 

As Rick Prelinger and others have shown, industrial companies—in Sweden as elsewhere—became extensive users of visual media. Their multiple advertisement campaigns disclose the scope of possibilities at hand as well as it shows a change of focus over time, teaching the public how to understand and navigate in modern society. This text explore, by findings in company archives such as Swedish Pathé and Vattenfall together with the rich resources that the Swedish censorship board holds, the provenance of the multiple film titles about Malmbanan that appeared in film programs all over the country during the years 1910-1915. The railroad and the hydropower station at Porjus, north of the polar circle, with its principal purpose to provide the railway with electricity, received major attention not only as an icon of modernity but for its spectacular sceneries in the northern wilderness, as in Med jordens nordligaste järnväg: en färd Narvik-Riksgränsen (AB Sveafilms, 1911). Numerous film titles were made, often screened at regular movie theaters. Specific film titles were copied, renamed and repositioned within new company distribution networks as well as program contexts making the origin of the productions unclear. To further obstruct the question of provenance a slew of new films was made on the very same topic with very similar titles. By focusing on these film titles and their provenance, early film practices and print circulations when it comes to early non-fiction and industrial films in Sweden are examined and explored.

Petrocinema presents a collection of essays concerning the close relationship between the oil industry and modern mediaespecially film. Since the early 1920s, oil extracting companies such as Standard Oil, Royal Dutch/Shell, ConocoPhillips, or Statoil have been producing and circulating moving images for various purposes including research and training, safety, process observation, or promotion. Such industrial and sponsored films include documentaries, educationals, and commercials that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation, creating media interfaces that would allow corporations to coordinate their goals with broader cultural and societal concerns. Falling outside of the domain of conventional cinema, such films firmly belong to an emerging canon of sponsored and educational film and media that has developed over the past decade. Contributing to this burgeoning field of sponsored and educational film scholarship, chapters in this book bear on the intersecting cultural histories of oil extraction and media history by looking closely at moving image imaginaries of the oil industry, from the earliest origins or spills in the 20th century to todays post industrial petromelancholia.

The potential of films to educate has been crucial for the development of cinema intended to influence culture, and is as important as conceptions of film as a form of art, science, industry, or entertainment. Using the concept of institutionalization as a heuristic for generating new approaches to the history of educational cinema, contributors to this volume study the co-evolving discourses, cultural practices, technical standards, and institutional frameworks that transformed educational cinema from a convincing idea into an enduring genre. The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema examines the methods of production, distribution, and exhibition established for the use of educational films within institutions–such as schools, libraries, and industrial settings in various national and international contexts and takes a close look at the networks of organizations, individuals, and government agencies that were created as a result of these films' circulation. Through case studies of educational cinemas in different North American and European countries that explore various modes of institutionalization of educational film, this book highlights the wide range of vested interests that framed the birth of educational and nontheatrical cinema.

As Victorianism lost its grip and industrialism entered a new phase, gender roles and the expressions of femininity became malleable and negotiable. Women’s new independence and mobility in modern society, particularly in the large cities, ushered in a “female modernity” underpinned by the relaxing of dress codes with a sporty look mirroring a general reconfiguring of women’s range of physical options. In the process, the New Woman became an entry in the cultural lexicon.

The purpose of this article is to explore the female body as a key site for inscribing and performing modernity across media during the first 15 years of the 20th century. The cultural conception of this modern type of femininity, characterized by independence, resourcefulness—and exploitation as the flipside—found its template in the female film stars and their physical wherewithal and abilities at large, especially in the serial films. Outside cinema, the desirable stars were marketed in newspapers, trade papers, women’s magazines, and ads, even in autobiographical works. The intense mediatisation of the life styles and panache embodied by these women on and off screen blended into a complex and iconic cocktail of modern femininity, attractive for some, shocking for others. In the early 1910s, a radical change can be observed concerning the concept of female celebrities at large across many fields of endeavor with cinema driving the process by repurposing images across media formats such as postcards, advertisements, and printed illustrations.

The key issues of this article are: To analyze screen-action heroine Pearl White and Annette Kellerman, an Australian professional swimmer turned vaudeville and film star in the US, as two comparative career case studies. The discourses around their achievements and celebrity will be discussed from advertisements, news and trade press articles, photographic collectibles, and a phalanx of promotional materials forming rounded career stories around two emblematic New Women; To investigate female film stars in relation to discursive negotiations of social mobility, independence, gender roles, and corporeal ideals across media.

Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall are inherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity.

Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.