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Event
Devices of Curiosity: An Evening of Early Popular Science Films
A screening with Oliver Gaycken, author of Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science.
Date: Wednesday May 27th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $8
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn
Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers began making films about scientific topics for general audiences. These films drew on Victorian and Edwardian traditions of the popular-science show, and they demonstrated such wonders and oddities of nature as the mites that live in the rinds of certain cheeses and the strength and agility of insects. These films also pioneered new forms of engaging with the world, which is particularly evident in the development of time-lapse sequences of plant growth. I will show a selection of some of the most outstanding popular-science films from the early silent era, which will provide a sense of the vitality of this largely unknown aspect of film history.
Oliver Gaycken is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member of the Film Studies Program and the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science (Oxford University Press 2015). His articles have appeared in Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television; Science in Context; Journal of Visual Culture; Early Popular Visual Culture, Screen, and the collection Learning with the Lights Off.
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LocationMorbid Anatomy Museum (View)
424 A Third Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
United States
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