The History of Film
A (mostly) chronological exploration of international film history. Each episode is a deep dive into the history of the people, events, technologies, cultural forces, and most all the movies that have molded cinema into what it is today! Join host Jacob Aschieris and other listeners for an in depth, thoughtful listening experience, and learn why no story ever written for the screen is as dramatic as the story of the screen itself!
Episodes
40 episodes
34- American Invasion, Sessue Hayakawa, and "The Cheat"
In this episode we cover just how, exactly, American cinema came to dominate Europe in the wake of WW1. We take a look at the economic practices that facilitated the "invasion" of American cinema onto French screens. We also examine one picture...
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56:47
33- War on Film, Film at War
This week we cover the effect of The War on the French film Industry. While The Conflict's Titanic needs did a real number on French production, it did also help develop a new kind of documentary filmmaking: The Newsreel, which was then put to ...
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22:16
32- Foundation of Death, Foundation of Light
This episode reexamines some topics we have already looked at, but this time as context for one of history's greatest butcheries, rather than as pure film history. The development of cinema is intertwined with the forces that defined the 20th c...
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25:25
Announcement – Plans and Reasons
The History of Film Podcast has been on Haitus since May of 2022. This announcement officially ends that. Let's get back to it!If you have any ideas on how I can improve the show, you can email me at historyoffilmpodcast@gmail.com.<...
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4:55
31- Gertie: The First Animated Character
In this episode we finish up our series on early animation by covering Gertie the Dinosaur and The Sinking of the Lusitania, both animated by Winsor McCay. Next time it's back to Europe, where we will cover the the effect of t...
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31:04
30- Animation Before the Dinosaur
This is the first of two episodes (only two, I promise) about the great animator Winsor McCay. We cover his life before he became a filmmaker, and his two first movies: Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates (1912).The history o...
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26:23
29- Phantasmagoria
It's a new year, and the History of Film is back! In this episode, we cover the life and achievements of French animator Emile Cohl, as he creates the first paper film animation, and brings fluidity and grace to a medium he helped invent!
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24:06
28- Drawings That Can Dance
The long promised day is finally here! We dive into the world of animation, examine ancient Iranian pottery, and meet animators named Charles-Emile Reynaud and James Stewart Blackton, as we begin our journey though a whole other kind of cinema....
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32:16
27- The Fall of Babylon, The Fall of Griffith
In this episode we take a look at Griffith's second most famous movie, Intolerance, and examine its production, structure, and impact. We also (finally) finish the long arc of Griffith's story, and bring his career, and his time here o...
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34:41
26- The Birth of a Nation: Part III
This is the last of it. In this episode, we dig into how and why The Birth of a Nation was so influential, and who was influenced by it. I am happy to say that next week we will be moving on from here. So three cheers for that....
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55:26
25- The Birth of a Nation: Part II
When I write these, I never know just how long they will be. As it turns out, talking about a film that has had a huge impact on the development of film history, and made the world so much worse, is taking a lot of words. So, this is the second...
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33:46
24- The Birth of a Nation: Part I
Well, where it is. The Birth of a Nation is an extremely important movie. It would be hard to overstate it. In this episode, we cover the original novel the film was based on, and the film-making process for the movie. So, spo...
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26:28
Bonus: Film as Cultural Artifacts
This is the first of (hopefully) a recurring series of episodes on film critical theory. Today, with special guest Melissa Favara, we cover the idea of cultural production. This is kind of the broadest way of looking at movies, as a product of ...
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15:04
23- D. W. Griffith
Here it is! Its an episode and a subject that has been a long time coming, and it's one that is less important then people used to think, though perhaps a little more important than some people say it is now. D. W. Griffith was a filmmaker ...
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33:01
22- Italian Futurism and Everything Else
Hello and welcome back! This is everything about early Italian films that we didn’t cover in the last two episodes. That means we talk a little about how Italian studios were run throughout the 1910s, Important actors not playing Maciste,...
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42:00
Announcement: Updates on "The History of Film" Going Forward
A few words on exciting changes that are coming to "The History of film in very near future. historyoffilmpodcast@gmail.comhistoryoffilmpodcast.com
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3:46
21- Astonishing Super Spectacles
This week it's all about two movies Quo Vadis? from 1912 or 1913 and Cabiria from 1914. If you would like to visit the show's website, you can do so at historyoffilm...
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32:43
20- Rise of the Roman Film Empire
This is the first of a planned three-episode series about Italian film from before the 1920's and the rise of fascism in Italy. In this very first episode, we cover the earliest origins of Italian film, though much more briefly than we did Fren...
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22:40
19- Murderers, Vamps and Deviants: The Work of Louis Feuillade
It is a little late, but it is also long! This is one I have been researching and working on for a long time. This week it's all about a new kind of serial film–one that takes us out of the light, and into the shadowy depths of a criminal a...
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34:59
18- Heroines and Villains Every Week! Early U.S. Serial Film
Forget movies that are a mere five reels long, how about three hundred!? In the United States during the "nickelodeon era" of film history, movies got longer in more ways than the ones we have been covering recently. Some became the first film ...
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22:36
17- Film D'art
Just as promised in episode 15, this week we begin our journey through the early influences of feature-length movies that will eventually take us into the studio era of the U. S. film industry and D. W. Griffith. Film D'art is more important fo...
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18:56
16a- Florence Lawrence
This episode is actually a bonus episode, rather than the other “bonus” episode I’ve released, which was 30 minutes long and took weeks to make. This episode gets a little heavy, but suicide is a heavy subject. If you, or someone yo...
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9:23
16- The Stars are Born
16- The Stars are BornHere it is, episode 16, which in my heart, is the Kill Bill Vol. II of the podcast. This one pares a lot with episode 15, so I have a couple of brief recaps of the last episode to make the episode flow a little bet...
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17:41