The Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) World Cinema Virtual Seminar Series

Adjusting to Hollywood Style: International trends in the 1910s and 1920s

Professor David Bordwell (UW-Madison)

Within a very few years — approximately 1910-1917 — Hollywood filmmakers developed a distinctive approach to visual storytelling. Within a few more years, most filmmakers in the major producing countries of Europe and Asia had accepted the premises of this style. How did this happen? What causal factors, both local and transnational, led to this degree of stylistic uniformity? To what extent did local film industries resist or revise the Hollywood model? This presentation attempts to explain the ways in which filmmakers in France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Japan came to terms with the newly emerged conception of cinematic storytelling.

Wednesday 28 January 2009, 10:00 a.m., Pyle Center